Admit it, Social Software is goofing off at work
I love when reporters ask me whether social software can be productive in the enterprise. Their questions always begin with something like, “why would an employee use something like Facebook at work?” (First off, if it actually was Facebook they wouldn’t use it for work, but that’s a different post.) The implicit assumption is that employees
would sit around adding friends and poking each other. I understand the perception, since social tools like blogs, social networking, and Twitter started in the consumer space.
But it’s like saying email is totally ridiculous at work.
Email started as a goofy tool. You sent it to your friends instead of letters. “Grandma! It’s me, I’m writing you a letter from my computer!” But as soon as we took it into the workplace, it had purpose by definition. We were at work. We did work things. I guess there may have been a moment of, “Hey Bob, I’m sending you an email. Testing. Testing. Is this thing on?” But then Bob said “yes, now what the hell do you want. We have work to do.”
The same questions I get today about social productivity software were asked of email at that time. How is email productive? What’s the ROI? The bigger challenge I see with social productivity software is that it’s hard to explain and far less analogous. Email was easy. “It’s like a letter, but on your computer.” Try that with blogging, wikis, rss or the hundreds of vowel-less companies associated with social software. It doesn’t help that we’ve chosen the word “social” as the prefix.
The funny thing is that we’re trapping ourselves with this language. If the button said, “status report” instead of “blog,” people would go, “oh!” click on it and get started.
Things people have said about this post
Anyone who thinks it doesn’t help get things done obviously hasn’t used the right application.
That’s a great way of putting it. I’ve been helping my father with his blog for about a year and he still complains about the word blog. He feels like the language surrounding “blogs” excludes his generation from participating. I wonder if it changing the language to stuff like eStatusreports would help? I think it would ease the transition for those unfamiliar with the tools, but I really feel like they just need to catch up. Understanding a blog post in its essence is a requirement if one wants to predict future applications for the communication format. I think the resistance to the social nomenclature will dissipate once the Luddites see the dust cloud from those who have caught on. I almost don’t want to help them because there is so much fresh ground without competitors.
eStatusreports, ack! Yeah, that would be pretty horrid. No doubt the natural adoption phases will play their course and the luddites will catch up while the early adopters find a new cul-de-sac to park their cars. In the meantime, we’ll just have to help companies talk about the values of these tools vs talking about the tools.
[…] As I’ve mentioned, the instant companies make social software available to its employees, it immediately becomes work focused (about productivity). E-mail is the easiest analogy. It’s (old) social software and it only works because everyone uses it. We all have work e-mail that helps us do our job. Obviously, email is not close to a comprehensive enough productivity tool so we bebop in and around it as needed. […]