Conversation about Enterprise 2.0

Tony Byrne has started a conversation (warning: website is down at present) about Enterprise 2.0 (aka Enterprise Social Software) on CMSWatch.

Here are my comments (waiting for moderation on the CMSWatch site).

• Is “Enterprise 2.0” more meaningful than “Social Software”?

  “Enterprise 2.0” is more than just social software. I define them with the SLATES and FLATNESS paradigms.

  And “Enterprise 2.0” is already passé. Let’s add semantics in the mix and call it “Enterprise 3.0”

• Blogging is passé — vive micro-blogging?

  Blogging is passé for “hey look at this cool post on this guy’s blog” type of messages. But expressing complex ideas in less than 140 characters is not possible.

  So micro-blogging is just another tool of the trade, just as blogging hasn’t replaced mailing list or forums, or IM hasn’t replaced email.

  OTOH, I must admit that I’ve been blogging a lot less (and, more importantly, seeing much less blog posts by the people I follow on twitter) since I’ve started twittering.

• Can social computing consistently bring real ROI?

  In any context where collaboration and knowledge sharing is important, yes.

  But “real” meetings and discussions are still relevant, though

• Should community managers have to worry about information lifecycle management?

  Yes. There is content that you need to control, specially in the face of trolling and other destabilisation attacks.

• Are social content ratings really helpful ?

  With the right (for the given context) rating algorithm, yes.

• Tools: suite or best of breed?

  Integration is of paramount importance. World-class open APIs help, a lot, but some features just need to be deeply integrated, at the repository level.

• Should your website/intranet have a community or be a community?

  Be, of course.

• Do you really need an enterprise micro-blogging tool when we have Twitter?

  Yes. Most people / corporations don’t want to merge personal and professional lives as the “A-list” twitterers do, and there are obviously confidentiality issues.