What a tangled web we weave
The one question you need to ask yourself is this: what is my purpose for connecting? Connecting just to connect is aimless.
I think this gets to the heart of why organisations are implementing Enterprise 2.0 systems; because they believe that there is more to it than just "friending" a colleague. Business is business and open sharing of information needs to also have a tangible return. This was a theme picked up the E2.0 Customer Council in their recent talk at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. To quote Greg Lowe:
How do you tie better collaboration to the bottom line? We can save time finding answers, etc. and you can do some correlation, and that’s your cost savings or productivity increase.
It's been interesting to reflect on this briefly. Clearly from a PR point of view (Brian Solis) the question is about finding Influencers and as Damien's post rightly points out there is a future of influence yet to arrive. Some of the types of tools that will deliver these feature are similar in concept to HiveMind, while others are far wider reaching in scope. While I think that seeking influencers (a PR related neccessity) is somewhat different from seeking expertise (an organisational need), it's clear that the next wave of tools will be smart systems that draw from the digital signals you leave to try and automatically understand what it is that you know. Within the Enterprise, this is a practical function that assists you in automatically sharing what you do with others, and to a degree there is a personal ROI (your employer pays you for your expertise). Does this have different implications when it's taken outside the Firewall and applied to the world in general? It will be interesting to watch as this space develops and matures both inside and outside the firewall.
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Posted 8 months ago
by Tim Bull
