In her Wednesday NY Times article, "MySpace Mind-Set Finally Shows Up at the Office", Laurie Flynn discusses how "Oracle, IBM and Microsoft...are increasingly adding social networking features to their corporate software applications."
Antony Brydon, with Visible Path, is heavily quoted and both discuss the dynamics of innovation amongst the four-horsemen of enterprise software (i.e., Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP), the cadre of white-label social-networking firms (e.g., SelectMinds, Jive, HiveLive) and established social hubs (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook). What's interesting is where Laurie asserts companies are finding business market from their social networking initiatives.
In prior posts, I've discussed the two inherent value contributions social networking can deliver within the enterprise: 1) an accessible "communal collaboration hub" structured around individual roles, responsibilities & expertise and 2) the capability to have social networking benefits autonomously introduced as natively, embedded attributes "within" a business software process.
Antony outlines the acknowledged value in "...using social networking...to help employees put a face on other people in the firm." And "interest-group" hubs structured around common business tasks & responsibilities enable employees to start "...talking, brainstorming and cooperating across departments...stimulate innovation...share information and collect ideas", as explained by Joe Busateri at MasterCard.
In the same way, we've found social-value with Facebook and Linked-In, so would we find similar benefit through "social-networking hubs" tailored to support the networks we collaborate with at the office. Rachel Happe discusses the underlying principle of "content equaling community" supporting this truism in her post this week.
To date, the force majeure's social-networking thread has focused on this type of application -- the "communal collaboration hub" built around a common interest. Not surprising since the business model is already well-established and many watching the topic believe in the economics.
But we're beginning to see more examples of "embedded social-networking capabilities" built directly within software from the likes of Oracle, SAP and Microsoft -- such as, the CRM On-Demand SFA capabilities from Oracle, Laurie outlines, or the new unified communications capabilities we're seeing in SAP and Microsoft's recent collaboration, Duet.
We're not there yet -- but, this is what is truly interesting to watch and, in my opinion, will serve as proof for when the "myspace mindset finally shows up at the office."
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