Monday, August 4, 2008

Enterprise Social Network?

So, can a social network exist and work within a company? Well, some believe that it can be and along with other web2.0 technologies/ideas (e.g. wiki’s, image galleries & tagging/rating content) have loosely called this subject "Enterprise 2.0" or 'Socialprise' a term apprently invented by http://www.insideview.com. However its worth mentioning that some people still debate the existence of an Enterprise 2.0 market and others claim the term is an oxymoron.

But Forrester Research believes 50% of the Global 2000 are planning to adopt some type of Enterprise 2.0 solutions by 2013 and According to ABI Research, this market will be worth nearly $1.3 billion by then. In fact, Forrester's latest report "Facebook for the Enterprise" shows how some companies are already using some social networking features for:

harnessing the network to optimize workforce utilization, develop professional staff, retain talent, and locate expertise

To meet this apparent demand, even Oracle's On-demand CRM Rel15 [its Software-as-a-service (SAAS) response to Salesforce.com] now includes social media functionality such as 'Message Center', which facilitates real-time commentary like a wiki and ‘Sticky Notes’. This allows users to tag objects with a comment, subscribe to the related message stream and expose this as a portlet or gadget for embedding in an external home page such as iGoogle. (Apparently there's "even more to come" from Oracle). And with the adoption of Open Social, it means companies looking to include Social Networks in their Enterprise software now only have to include one standard.

Awareness Inc. claim to be the leader in enterprise social media. They have developed a social media on-demand application that combines the full range of Web 2.0 technologies - blogs, wikis, discussion groups, social networking, podcasts, RSS, tagging, photos, videos, mapping, etc. - with security, control, and content moderation. They even have major corporations such as: McDonald's, the New York Times, Northwestern Mutual, and Procter and Gamble as clients.
Conversing with Kevin Andrew from Awareness recently, he claims that his clients:

build brand loyalty, generate revenue, drive new forms of marketing, improve collaboration, encourage knowledge-sharing, and build a "corporate memory."

However, just having the technology or services available to you doesn't mean you have a valuable tool instantly on your hands. For years companies have had different "Enterprise Collaboration" tools available in the form of software such as Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server, but are these really "social networking" platform? (Some companies such as Scotiabank think they are, perhaps because they make good headlines). I'd suggest that they are not.

So "social networks are open for business", but are there any examples of companies who have actually implemented a social network within their company? Well yes, Kodak employees who take photos in their personal lives now share pictures online about their hobbies, families, and travels. http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=323

Does anyone have any further examples?

3 comments:

peter woodford said...

Hey guys at socialcast. I like your approach. We also started with our own social network and then begun to white label our technology to clients.

Checkout www.brandstation.tv

Perhaps the platforms can link together.

We're totally into APIs / enterprise interoperability.

We're also into widgets and gadgets as these have help us extend our audience distribution network in the past and for biz clients.

Hayden Sutherland said...

Thanks for the post, its always good to have vendors entering the conversation.

I'm particularly interested in hearing how clients requirements for for in-house social networking has changed recently and what functionality they are most keen on adopting.

Anonymous said...

This sounds of interest. After building a social network and live TV aggregation platform, we realised the opportunity to build corporate social network platform from our tried and tested technology. We now provide corporate social networking platforms and services. We have a proven track record with technology currently in use by blue-chip clients. Our brandstation solution is offered to corporate clients keen on using social networking and web 2.0 technology for either internal communication or consumer marketing. Brandstation also come in an on-demand set up with ready-made core functionality, to offer accessible communications solutions around brand and marketing business objectives. The platform enables any company to enjoy the benefits of Web 2.0 social network for internal and external communications, no matter how small or large the company is. There's further information at http://www.brandstation.tv