Social media's long boom - Does enterprise "get it?"

Almost half of U.S. adults use social networks such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn - a 600% increase from 2005, according to the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

This bodes well for companies considering adding social technology to their collaborative environments - but corporate adoption has been lagging:

A recent report from TMC/Intellicom shows that private enterprise has been adopting social technology much more tentatively than the public – and in a limited fashion. Those surveyed were using social tools primarily for intelligence-gathering and marketing, with collaboration – the most powerful and transformative use of social technology for enterprise – taking a distant but slowly-rising third place.

Meanwhile, a recent report from usability expert Jakob Nielsen found in more than a dozen case studies that enterprise social technology – even when led by guerilla efforts and pilot programs from within the enterprise - is profoundly successful and self-correcting :

Among the findings by the Nielsen Norman Group (cited here ):

1. Underground efforts yield big results - Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, after which they integrate them more thoroughly.
2. Front line workers are driving the vision - Many senior managers still consider social tools something their teenagers use. Young workers, who do not need to be taught or convinced to use these tools, expect them in the workplace.
3. The business need is the big driver - Social software is not about the tools, it is about what the tools enable the users to do and about the business problems the tools address.
4. Communities are self-policing - When left to their own devices, communities within enterprise intranets police themselves. Workers tend to retain their professional identities, leaving little need for the organization to institute controls.
5. Organizations must cede power - As companies have been learning from using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with their customers, they can no longer fully control their message. This is true, too, when Web 2.0 tools are used in internal communications.

Later this month, speakTECH will publish my white paper on effective strategies for companies that want to use social technology both inside and outside their walls.

Stay tuned!