the displaced texan

Coming off the heels of the Enterprise 2.0 conference there’s been a lot of talk about social networking inside the firewall. I first saw Social Enterprise used in Intel’s Laurie Buzek’s post on the social enterprise and the term really resonated with me. Lisa goes on to talk about what behaviors have to change before social networking can really achieve success (I’ve listed them below just to make it easier to follow along).

• Silos must come down like the Berlin Wall: I bang into silos on a daily basis. Corporations love silos.
• Consumerism affects what you do inside your four walls: How people use technology to interact, collaborate and communicate outside of works DOES affect what they want to do inside work.
• Understand that people will go down with the email ship: We are not delusional and think that any of these social tools will replace email for people. We all know that email was never meant to be a collaborative tool, but somehow it is reality.
• If it takes a manual to use it – throw it out the door: When was the last time you read a manual? Seriously. Does any software or computer even ship with one anymore?
• If IT doesn’t act now, then someone else will:

Forrester Research sees the adoption of social networks in the enterprise. They predict social networking applications will make up the largest share of the $4.6 billion that enterprises will be spending on enterprise web 2.0 applications by 2013 (see Forrester Predicts a Large Growth in Social Networking Market but How Will Its Integration Occur with the Enterprise?).

I recently had a discussion about blogging inside the firewall and what challenges presented themselves once the legal/IT/communication teams heard the word “blog” and my response was, “We’re beyond the blog.”

Micro-Blogging

It took a while for me to become a believer in Twitter, but as I updated more frequently, built a larger network and found the time to start investigating the conversations happening, I could quickly see the application of the tool in the enterprise as a form of knowledge management. There are others that believe the same way. At the aforementioned Enterprise 2.0 conference, a panel discussion was held on the promise of social computing held in the marketplace. Laura Fitton, @pistachio on Twitter, is a big fan of Twitter in the Enterprise and sat in on a panel to discuss the topic. One of Laura’s major points is that micro-blogging helps to strengthen weak ties. And Lisa has already stated that corporations love silo’s, I start to see the real benefit.

My Argument

Two reasons why I’m really digging micro-blogging in the enterprise: it’s easy to jot small thoughts down vs. the daunting task of writing long form and the multiple access points to the most popular micro-blog Twitter.

1. The first week I was on twitter I was a mere spectator. I want to see what people were saying on topic I found interesting, on my brand and any learnings I could find. Of course, the second week quickly moved into engagement and the need to want to contribute. For me, that meant forcing myself to post items. I found that as I start to reveal more, the more followers I gained. And, that gave me a broader group to follow.

All this to say, twitter is easy to use and once you’ve been doing it awhile it’s second nature to want to share what you’ve seen, what you’re thinking and what you’re reading. All very valuable intelligence for an enterprise.

2. Twitter has a multitude of clients to use in order to update status: twitter.com, browser plug-ins, thwirl, browser side bars like Flock or Yoono, mobile and now voice via jott.com. For an enterprise that has a variety of personalities and technology acumen, everyone can find a tool that they are comfortable using.

Making the Business Case

Micro-blogging typically is an entry that’s limited to 140 characters and offers users to just update short snippets of thoughts or information. For a typically cube dweller who is being inundated with email, phone calls, colleagues dropping by their cube and bosses yelling at them, short outbursts of useful information is a great.

If you are a non-believer that small bits of information are useless I submit to you my pencil theory. A single pencil is very easy to break and not very strong, but a handful of pencils is almost impossible to break. A single thought is not powerful, but a handful of thoughts on a single topic is intense.

You can see an executive being able to search for specific terms, like annual report or employee surveys, and quickly finding a dashboard of activity and progress on projects. Or employees who have been thrown on a project in midstream (it happens) being able to quickly get up to speed by just reviewing the “twit stream”.

I could go on, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Please post a comment. It makes me happy.

If you’re still confused on what twitter is and how to use it, check this out.