Social Media

Yes, another challenge for those of us that work in the IT department! Just what we wanted, right? We're spending all this time reworking the corporate Intranet so everyone can collaborate better. What happens when we're done and no one shows up?

It could be tempting to conclude that because your employees enjoy keeping a personal blog or spending time with contacts on social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, that they would want to participate in an internal corporate version of those sites. But don't be so sure.

PC World recently released their list of the 15 biggest disappointments of 2007. Two of the items on that list didn't surprise me, but two other items were shocking to see on the list but in reflection absolutely true.

I wasn't surprised to see that both Apple's "Leopard" OS 10.5 (#8) and Microsoft's Windows Vista (#1) on the list. I've been talking about my disappointment on the state of the computer desktop for sometime now. I'm just glad to see others have noticed the problem so I don't look like Mr. Glum to everyone.

However, I was surprised to see two content management system related items that made the list.

I am a loyal reader of Andrew McAfee's articles which he posts on his Harvard Business School blog, The Impact of IT on Business and their Leaders.  Andrew McAfee is an associate professor at Harvard and spends a great deal of time on his blog discussing and defining Enterprise 2.0.

While we all talk a lot about about Web 2.0, Collaboration 2.0, and Enterprise 2.0, there is actually not enough formal research on the subject as many in the business and academic world would like.  The lack of concrete research and facts on Enterprise 2.0 can cause managers to be a little concerned that they're bringing toys and not business tools to their worker's computer desktops.  There is enough distraction in the workplace and managers question why they would want to bring Facebook to the office?

BusinessWeek published an interesting article titiled, Did MySpace Really Beat Yahoo? The article discusses the difficulty to confirm which site actually has more traffic, MySpace or Yahoo.