Introducing Social Networking Tools and Social Networking Analysis to Business: What To Do

Criteria to Use to Determine Which Social Networking Tools to Introduce, and How (in approximate order of importance):

• The tool must meet an acknowledged and urgent or important need (there should be no necessity to ‘sell’ users on it)
• It must be simple and intuitive to use (there should be no necessity to train people to use it)
• It must be available to everyone, including those outside the organization (not just an elite group)
• It must be relatively inexpensive to introduce, support and maintain
• It must be reliable
• It must start with a small-scale experiment, with a ‘champion’
• It must simply ‘work around’ excessive organizational security without posing a serious security risk
• Its use should be encouraged, supported, appreciated, funded and rewarded by management
• There should not be too many tools with the same functionality
• It should enable transfer of advice, not just information
• It should appeal to the different generations using it
• If its use is project-specific, it should be simple to archive it or take it down when the project ends
• Some applications require a ‘critical mass’ of users
• It would be better if it didn’t duplicate functionality of an existing ‘legacy’ application in the organization
• It would be better if its availability was useful to the organization in recruiting
• It would be better if it worked on portable technologies

Which Tools Participating Organizations Were Planning to Introduce (by type, using the typology of my earlier post on social networking tools):

• People-Connector Tools: People-finders, social network mapping, proximity locators, affinity detectors: Lots of curiosity but no plans for use of new tools of these types. Good old-fashioned directories of expertise are still sought, and still elusive to create and maintain — the challenge is automating collection and maintenance of as much of the data as possible, and motivating people to self-maintain the rest.
• Social Publishing: Blogs, podcasts, social bookmarkers, photo journals, memediggers, product evaluators, personal diaries (FaceBook etc.): Again, lots of curiosity but no plans for use of new tools of these types. Using blogs accessible only within organizations was considered by some to be self-defeating. Most organizations assumed their people just didn’t have time to keep or read blogs. In some organizations, social bookmarkers are used by librarians to create linked lists on subjects of interest to professionals.
• Wikis: Tried, with varying success, mostly by small groups already familiar with wikis, for projects with a sense of urgency and a short life. Not much appetite for using them beyond that.
• Discussion Forums, Commercial Collaboration Tools: Tried by most, almost always unsuccessful. “Solutions in search of a problem”, and the collaboration tools were too complicated. The new Lotus Connections seems to be encountering the same problems and same resistance from users.
• Mindmaps: Used by quite a few organizations, but not really as a social networking tool.
• VoIP, Virtual Presence: Some use of Skype, many users of various desktop videoconferencing tools, mostly quite successfully. The most interesting one was called ePresence, an open source software that is free (you provide the server; they host a public directory of e-presentations) and can be used for small-group desktop videoconferencing and for broadcast videoconferences.
• Peer Production, Open Space: Not used by any of the participants at this session.
• Virtual Reality/Gaming: A couple of ‘showcase’ applications of Second Life.
• IM: Not sure if it qualifies as a social networking tool, but most participants used IM and found it very successful in some communities.
• Electronic Discovery: One participant used an application (Trampoline SONAR) that draws real-time network visualizations of the relationships of various types of data.

Value of Social Networking Analysis:

Patti Anklam skilfully took us through the history and basics of analysis, including the most popular tools (like Valdis Krebs’ Inflow) and the analytical methodology (largely developed by Rob Cross and his colleagues, which I explained in this earlier post). My friend Ted Graham took us through a case study of his organization’s use of one such tool, and while it was very interesting, I remain unconvinced that this analysis is likely to be worth the significant time and cost needed to do it properly. My takeaways on social networking analysis were therefore:

• If you’re going to develop social network maps, do it to understand the reason why the de facto networks are the way they are, not to try to change them. You can’t coerce or bribe people to network with people they aren’t inclined to network with. The best you can do is work around the disconnects. And understand how others work around organizational problems and obstacles, and that sometimes the maps can help you understand these workarounds — why the organization is nothing like what the organization chart suggests.
• These maps are severely limited by the fact they only map relationships within the organization. Some people who are intensely connected to customers might therefore appear ‘disconnected’ on the maps when they are anything but.
• These maps can also be easily ‘gamed’ by people with agendas, biases or personality conflicts. Those who refuse to participate in the mapping organization (often because they are too busy, or because they feel, with some justification, that it’s an unnecessary invasion of privacy) can also seriously distort the map results. 
• The maps, flawed as they are, are visually attractive and draw you into analyzing what they mean. For getting resources for KM, they therefore have substantial PR value.
• I really liked two of Patti’s points: That work today is so complex that no one can do any significant task alone, so networks are essential to one’s work productivity and functionality; and that we are all in networks of one kind or another, all the time.

A ‘wow’ moment from Ted: The first year e-mail became really substantially used in business was 1998. It’s only been around as mainstream technology for a decade. And already Generation Millennium are abandoning it in favour of newertechnologies for everything except “communications with The Man”.

An interesting event. Thanks to the organizers, hosts and participants.