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Getting started with enterprise social networking

A great post here from the Headshift Blog the post is a summary of Lee Bryant's talk at Online Information where he discussed how Social Networking could be used within an enterprise.

Lee's slides cover four main points, but as he says there are many more potential uses for Social Networking within an enterprise, including:

"Social reading and writing" - this is about sharing what people are reading about by using RSS

"Social search and expertise location" As Lee says Social networks are a great way to find people and can help show "connections and networks" that you might not have been aware of.

"Social networking for collaboration"

"Social networking for key client relationships" Lee describes this as a great way to "keep in close touch with key clients" I'm not sure poking is appropriate though!

"Unified messaging" or Twitter behind the firewall

Lee also makes some really useful points about how to start using Social Networking, including those conversations you need to have with IT, but which we all dread. As Lee says "not one of those blinkered IT conversations that says all sharing is wrong and employees cannot be trusted to speak or write about their work, but rather a conversation that looks at benefits vs costs and real risks based on evidence, not assumptions"

I couldn't agree more with this statement and too often have gone into meetings with IT to discuss Web 2.0/Social Media only for them to say "well we don't want to do that because it is dangerous and we know someone is going to abuse the system"

There is also a mention for Information Professional's in Lee's post, which is nice..."...look at the role of information and communication professionals, and seek to find ways of making their activity more focused on information networking and helping others develop key competencies around searching, sharing and personal information management"

This is an important point and something that we can all do something about by making the stuff we read about and write more readily available, be that via a blog or on a Wiki or as part of a feed from a Social Bookmarking site...it all helps!

Full post as published by LI Issues on December 15, 2008 (boomark / email).