Go Big Always

Sam, I’m sending plenty of “old-fart e-mail” around my company this week, and it’s driving me up a wall. I certainly wouldn’t mind the social computer option for my day job!

Hi Sam. I’m in the process of giving Twitter tutorials to our F500 clients. One of the main benefits I mention about Twitter is that it is essentially platform-independent and that the most avid Twitter enthusiasts make heavy use of mobile devices vs. computers. Also, it’s worth mentioning that Craig Cmehil, an SAPer and fellow enterprise irregular, has developed an “enterprise twitter” that may be the answer to “internal Twitter-like communication.” Follow Craig at http://twitter.com/ccmehil.

Sam, As I’ve blogged before, you’re on the bleeding edge of all of this. As such, I love your idea of a dual-drive social computer. If there’s a hope of driving change within the organization, your notion of closed/open questions (the left box) has to be implementable in the enterprise first.

Once the Big Scare of sharing information inside/outside in this way is over, and the executives realize the value to productivity (somehow we’ll have to measure it to show them), they’ll buy the dual-drive terabyte drives all day long. Maybe in 2010?

I think it would be great to have something like Twitter internally. I envision myself at a customer site…client has a question where my response would have to be “Not sure, I’ll have to get back to you”. Instead of getting back to work, finding the right resource and getting back to the client after a day or two. I pull out my iphone (which I need btw), send out my 140 character request and get back to the client with a better answer in a few minutes. Now the client not only has an answer, but an example of what a great company they will soon be doing business with!

Sam - I’d LIKE the two-way interaction … but suspect that it’s going to be a while coming (things like Facebook are blocked at work, for example). I can get to Twitter AT work, but not WITH work people (unless they are on Twitter as individuals like I am).
I’m keeping a eye on Craig’s work (and hope it won’t be ‘tied’ to SAP!) as well, and am interested in how things like Clearspace, Sharepoint and Quickr/Connections take this sort of interaction forward. Mind you, opening up the firewall to Twitter could be fraught with security holes … but SOME sort of interaction through the bricks should be possible??

Sam - I’ve fallen in love with my two-way social computer. One of the main reasons is that I’ve made so many deep, important connections over the last several months using Twitter. I get my news, sports, entertainment and great ideas from the all the people I speak or “tweet” with on a regular basis. Thanks for encapsulating this great message in your post.

Best,
@astrout

Hey Sam. I like the social computing metaphor. When you think about it, a “network” implies a neutral system of conduits, (don’t go all Ted Stevens on me here, I understand networking). The intelligence is not in the network but in the nodes, the people.

E-mail data is unstructured, and valuable information in e-mail is often lost to the organization. Twitter is not much better at this really, but at least you benefit from the extended life of a thought as it is passed on, replied to, commented, morphed, etc. by your network of smart people on Twitter.

I used to think Twitter needed features like Groups and threaded conversations. Now I think that would kill the fun and as well as the utility of Twitter. Don’t know if we’ll ever see your dual-drive social computer idea (although I love it). But I’ve caught snatches of conversation on Twitter that developers are moving toward building an enterprise version. I believe it was Shannon Whitley (@swhitley) who mentioned that a few weeks ago. Thanks for getting this discussion going.

Seems to me that the challenge for any social computing environment is contextual awareness. Twitter’s simplicity means that there’s no distinction between followers, so as work colleagues appear in my follower list (and family members!) I spend more time considering the appropriateness of each tweet and I’m less capable of using the service freely. The ‘kvetch club’ aspect of Twitter — which is critically valuable to me professionally, as I’ve gotten support routes and escalations that I never could have found otherwise — makes it challenging when my colleagues and supervisors begin to follow me.

The two-way social computing you’re positing must have some level of segregation and filtering to work at all. Maybe a selected tweet feed or tagging to indicate SFW messages?

Key points that jump out are “social computer” and “no complexity.” The primary attraction for Twitter (for me) is that it sits more or less quietly in iGoogle (BeTwittered) and shows me a set of conversations that merge into a single background. I can turn to it for answers, or simply to “converse” just as I’d do in a “real” office, all exactly as you note.

Looking at the posts above (about internal IT restrictions) it seems that the next step is a Twitter “social computer” plug-in for the intranet. Build it into Clearspace, for example, so that employees can get the same interaction inside the firewall as current Twits (…must be a better word, eh?) get on the open channels. It’s not perfect — it misses the richness and diversity of the larger audience — but is a STEP in the right direction. At the least, it creates the collective experience within the company that “silos” have so effectively prevented. That would be an immediate–and powerful–change with regard to knowledge sharing in many internal environments.

Sam - Absolutely! I think there are two keys for enterprise (F500) type executives though:

1. Ensuring there is something in the tweet for them to react to. Most senior executives I’ve encountered do a much better job reacting to a contextualized problem than answering a broad question.

2. True peers & Instant networks. Scoble has been talking recently about how soc. networks are only “fun” once you have >50 friends. Most executives don’t have the time / inclination to find the right people to add. Building qualified twitter packs of folks that have shared experience and context to provide a relevant response will be the active ingredient.

What you are proposing seems essentially to be groups under a different name - a work group and a whole world (followers) group.

Take it to the next level and you have different sub-groups for work … IT, Sales, etc and you star to come to the same pitfalls as email groups -who in the company manages who is and isn’t on them, who adds people, and so on.

Then there could be ‘real-life’ friends, or community groups for people in your suburb and/or surrounds.

The only way I can see you solution working simply is to have a twitter server (for want of a better term) within a company’s firewall that anyone i the company can access and only when they are on the network. This eases the complexity of managing users as if you aren’t on the network you can’t see it.

What it doesn’t give you is 1 post to both company and world … and is that such a bad thing? How many of us have hit ‘reply all’ on an email or typed a message in the wrong IM window?

I like twitter because it’s simple - i can send a private message to 1 person, or i can message the world and whoever happens to follow me or stumble upon my message via a key-word alert or on the public timeline can see it.

Whilst I can see uses for what you’re proposing, I don’t think it’s necessarily the best solution to a perceived problem.

Sam, Michael Arrington gets at some of the same issues in his “I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day” http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/09/i-saw-the-future-of-social-networking-the-other-day/

What I would like to see is a combination of presence-aware, location-aware, and group-aware messaging, i.e., given a particular situation or problem, the system tells me (a) who’s likely to know something about my problem, (b) where are they right now, and (c) how can I reach them (that is, the system should givem me a range of channels, including good old fashioned email).

I like the concept, Sam. But I suspect it’ll be a while before anything like it is embraced. I’m not sure a lot of Fortune folks *want* the immediacy it offers, or see the value that you, me, and everyone else here sees. In other words, what’s required is one part technology and one part cultural change.

Excellent concept and something I’ve been hoping for. Many good ideas in the responses too. I think the answer is a little of each suggestion. Yes, twitter groups will be required (see my recent post on that subject as well as twitter tags and hashtags http://thepaisano.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/twitter-hashtags-and-groups.
A twitter server inside the firewall should be an option much like we can have our own yahoo or google search engine within confined quarters but it shouldn’t be required. Only an option for the most paranoid organizations.
I am convinced that this two way communication thru the firewall will become a reality, much like I knew it years ago when pagers started allowing you to reply with a simple yes or no response. The next step was logical as a funny looking little device called blackberry arrived on the scene and changed business and personal communication forever. The same evolution or revolution is taking place now regarding instant messaging and other forms of social networking communication. IT admins like myself have been arguing about the validity of IM in the corporate environment for many years. It has slowly become an accepted method of communication in the enterprise thanks to solutions with greater control over security and content (Sametime, Live Messenger, etc.). I see the same path for twitter type communication thru the firewall.
The biggest hurdle will be fear of disclosure of propriety corporate information which is the same concern with emails. There are easy methods for monitoring and filtering this information so those fears can be easily illiminated. The hard part will be getting there. Who will build this bridge?
Thanks for bringing it to light, Sam. Once enough people get behind an idea and demand it then the process of the idea becoming a reality has begun!

Pai

Interesting metaphor, and it’s tricky stuff to be sure - making sure that people post the right question to the right crowd (”Hey, what are we calling our next Office Suite killer product?” or “Jeez, our new anti-inflammatory drug is killing people - what should we do?”) is an interesting usability problem, particularly if you’re using the same interface to post inside or outside.

Think of how often an e-mail is accidentally sent to the wrong person, outside of the organization instead of in, due to the wonder of auto-typed addresses?

Incidentally, something that worries me about simply polling the crowd - why bother to store information at all, if people are going to opt for the “lazyweb” poll of the crowd, rather than quickly searching the existing intranet, portal, forum, etc.?

This came up yesterday when I was discussing Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management 2.0 (linked from my name on this comment) - KM people tend to be pretty search savvy, as well as having a vested interest in capturing knowledge for later re-use.

Twitter-like broadcasts in a company of over a few hundred people could become a HUGE drain on productivity, if the rest of the systems are brought up to snuff to make sure that the broadcast isn’t the one and only way to get information.

What’s the appropriate balance? Haven’t seen any magic just yet.

[…] Lawrence just posted an article about Twitter and social computing. Sam notes that people are learning interesting information and getting questions answered by […]

A lot depends on what the rational is for using Twitter within the organisation. If it is as the basis for a conversation then it can be a great means to break down hierarchical boundaries between managers and employees. If it is used to check out what employees are doing then it can stop their conversations with others. If I’m bored at work, or want to converse on issues unrelated to my employment, then having my work colleagues or mangers following my Twitter would impeed me having those conversations on Twitter. I suppose it’s similar to managers asking to be your friends on Facebook. It maybe that users would need a business Twitter account and a personal Twitter account.

Also, I sometimes find that geographical locations have a big impact on what conversations you can follow on Twitter. In multinational organisations with employess working in the Americas, Europe and Asia time zones can dictate what conversations are possible with others. Living in Europe often precludes me from having real time conversations with my colleagues on the West cost of America. Therefore, Twitter conversations are relatively time-zone specific.

Nevertheless, I believe organisations are going to increasing use Twitter, to converse with their staff, and also with the public at large. It has the ability to give organisations a quick and friendly response to queries and partake in real-time conversations concerning them e.g. Jetblue advising on flight delays etc.

Hi Sam! Welcome to my world!! Ever since I decided to take my role as a social computing evangelist into the extreme, that is, gave up on work related e-mail, I have been enjoying that experience you mentioned of the social computer, where the vast majority of my interactions are taking place through social software tools, whether internal or external. In fact, over the last few weeks the number of fellow colleagues joining my Twitter stream has doubled and the fact that we also have a Twitter-clone behind the firewall is helping me move progressively away from e-mail and into a world where there is one thing, and only one thing, that rules: My social network(s).

They keep feeding me the same way I keep feeding them and that mutual nurturing relationship is what makes it all worth while. It is what keeps you sharp, knowledgeable, ahead of the curve, ready to act upon whatever you are confronted with and ready to come out successfully! Like I said, that mutual nurturing relationship of the social network is what keeps things going on its own and why it will continue to thrive within the enterprise world. There is no way back! I don’t even think it is worth while trying. It’s always better working smarter than harder, don’t you think?

Sam, I always love your graphics. First the octopus, now the Berlin Wall of The Open Question.

The simplicity you speak of is musing, causing one to gaze off wonderingly. Imagine a world where your personal connections and your company met. Powerful. Not having any, groups, directories or walled areas would allow for the smart people outside of each other’s network to connect and assist.

There have been a lot of “control” and “flow/scale” comments/replies that validly point out things that will tie that “open question” right up. Certainly your post speaks to the “what if?”. How do we knock down that wall? Is it pie in the sky? Unfortunately, I believe it will be awhile before corporate control will be relinquished to the masses in a Twitteresque fashion.

But what else?

Mike’s comment about “considering the appropriateness of each tweet” speaks to possible need for two drives, two boxes. Perhaps this could be similar to the folks who have conversations going on a wordpress blog for business and a livejournal for their personal lives. Could you have four drives and two boxes? Same connections in both, yet focused on these two general categories?

So many questions. Thanks for getting this one started!

I’ve spent a lot of time this morning trying to think of how you could make it work. Don’t worry, when I figure it out I’ll write you into my patent.

For now, those who have two drives *and* two boxes, should count themselves lucky.

This is a great post - I’ve found that I prefer Twitter to email because the focus is on the conversation, not on the content. What I mean by that is if you put a breadcrumb of an idea out there it is very easy to see if that idea is engaging to others…and very quickly understand whether that idea is worth investing more time on. I can write brilliant PRDs…that may never go anywhere. It’s an amazing tool for getting feedback early and often.

Interesting discussion going on here Sam. I’m in the middle on this one. I can see the potential for productivity drain, as well as the laziness of asking when the answer is already knowable via some other means.

One potential use might be having customer service on a Twitter like service internally, or perhaps their own network. Likewise developers would be on their own network. Essentially the same thing across managers, etc.

What you essentially might see is a form of groups or subnets on the Twitter type service. Perhaps Twitter is already working the Enterprise angle and has yet to release it out.

The hardest sell won’t be the on the tech; I agree that cultural barriers will be the hardest to overcome. Right now I can barely convince a couple of coworkers of the value of networking, though folks a level up or two network constantly. Why aren’t developers doing this better, internally and externally?

Great post. I have found myself struggling with the same idea. I find my Twitter interactions to be invigorating, thought provoking, and they seem to expose me to many new ideas. Then, I have essentially the same interaction with my employees or co-workers and find the style of the conversation (and sometimes the content) to be the opposite. We have been toying with the idea of a Twitter driven application that allows for group Tweets - i.e. one tweet delivered to a specific group of people, but all are able to see the message and the responses. I realize there are several tools that would allow for this in the traditional manner - email, threaded discussions, etc. but all of these lack the simplicity and elegance of the economy of the 140 character message. Once I had several of the sales team begin to Tweet, I found them to spend less time crafting long (and somewhat boring messages) and focus instead on getting the message out and moving on the the associated action items. A huge improvement, in my opinion.

Today I found the concept of Twitter Packs (as a result of your post) and am trying to determine if will provide the functionality (group messages, etc.) that I am looking for or at least allow us to leverage a Pack to control to whom a message is delivered.

The long/short of my ideas is this. Twitter is a fantastic tool. But there seems to be a void in the marketplace that is demanding a ‘Twitter on steroids’ product to accomplish the two way social computing model.

Thoughts?

Sam,
Nice way of looking at a problem I don’t often face. I am at a small company that gets Twitter, for the most part, but there still is a lot of “old fart” email– which i frequently rail against.

Most importantly here, the idea of “open questions” is one of my primary uses of Twitter. So, if working in a larger company, I can see the benefits of having an “enterprise Twitter” that intersects with the public Twitter for information gathering and sharing. Is that what you are getting at?

Doug Haslam: http://twitter.com/dough

Hi Sam,

Here are few ideas based on your blog and its comments:

Twitter-like systems in corporate settings (internal usage only): The success of such systems - if they existed - would depend a lot on the characteristics of the particular organization in which they are being used. Corporate size would have a huge impact on the viability of such systems. Compare a start-up with 20 users and a corporation with 1000, 10,000 or more users. One comment refers to the productivity loss with a company of a few 100 users. Think of what the “public timeline” in a multi-national with multiple divisions would look like. The potential of twitter-like systems is that you can post a question or comment into the “flow” and get a response from someone in the corporate social network with whom you have had no previous contact. In order for this to work, these
individuals must pick out your comment amongst the thousands of other questions, ideas, random thoughts. This is difficult to achieve without the users doing nothing else but watching the flow (as I have discovered with twitter). Maybe, filters could help in this regard.

In reality, individuals in the corporate setting are also part of many smaller social networks that represent their actual situation - the unique set of attributes that are associated with them. They are in various projects, based in certain location, etc. Based on the particular question that a user may toss into the flow, the involved social network changes as well. Maybe, I want to combine social networks: projects in China with projects dealing with dam-building. The tool in question should be deal with such request. Ideally, other tools in the corporate arena would also be able to identify which social network is appropriate based on the context of the work in which I am currently performing. If I’m working on a project plan, then it would be great to be able to watch the “flow” from other project members.

Definition of social networks: As some of the other comments have described, the value of such twitter-like systems is largely based on a correct definition of the network involved. I’m assuming that in larger corporations that the definition of social networks will be a mixture of automatically created social networks based on the individual’s current characteristics and an selection of followers / friends based on the individual’s own choices. The critical factor is in the creation of a network that enables you to perform your job as effectively as possible. This must be of course be counter-balanced by the innovation potential of having conversations with people who are outside of your “corporate-created” networks.

I think it also critical to see twitter not as an isolated tool but part of corporate IT infrastructure with other forms of collaboration. In this environment, the transition from the twitter-like system to a wiki or some other tool would be interesting to explore. The conversations that happen in the twitter-like systems are useful but what happens based on these conversations is more important. For example, I post a question into the “flow” in a bridge-building social network. Someone in another country sees my comment and responds. Based on this conversation, we decide to view the engineering drawing in question. The transition to some sort real-time collaboration environment should be easy and supported by the corporate infrastructure.

The idea of separate social networks: I think that notion that there are two separate social networks (viewed at the meta level) - one based on my corporate experience and one based on my existence outside of the corporate arena - is still valid. An artificial attempt on the part of corporations to keep these areas apart is short-sighted and, in all likelihood, impossible to achieve. My current twitter network represents a combination of both worlds. - the corporate firewall make stop usage of twitter tools but an individual’s network itself exists outside corporate control.

From a corporate perspective, the power arises when these two networks start to merge - when I as an individual - if desired - can exploit their combined power to accomplish tasks. When I’m working on a large outsourcing project, there are individuals from different organizations - inside and outside the corporation - involved. To draw the line at firewall and say, “My social network can’t cross this line” no longer mirrors reality. It might be useful to distinguish between Intranet-, Extranet- and Internet-based social networks. From the corporate perspective (based as well on the tasks involved), a network that spans Intranet - Extranet might be more acceptable than Intranet-Internet (such an interaction is of course useful when talking to end-users / customers).

Dick

I’ll have to disagree with Ann Handley when she says: “I suspect it’ll be a while before anything like it is embraced” and I’ll declare (like Connie) “that I used to think” in certain paradigms about what would be most useful in twitter but my thinking has radically and quickly shifted. To put that “time to embrace” in perspective, disclaimer: I represent an older online population/think. Yet when my colleagues @ccmehil and @finnern introduced the idea of wiki to me, I was amazed to see how widely it is being used and how folks are clambering for wikispaces. I also observed initial detractors turning believers. Concerns? Seeing a DM function in Twitter used as noisily as email once a Twitter-lookalike becomes enterprise mainstream. Opportunities? I like what Rachel Happe said about this being a great way of testing whether an idea is sticky. You know, never thought before that about how powerful the effect of “no response” is to our floated ideas. It’s a great filtering mechanism, wonderful way for pulse-checks, beats surveys hands-down. Thanks as always for the stickiness of your engaging conversations.

Wow though I am on a break from work I do still keep an eye on the interesting things. As a couple have mentioned I’m working on an experiment at work (I work at SAP) which has captured the interest of both internal as well as a few external groups.

I’ve built a prototype which combines some of the popular features as we as the brilliant idea behind Twitter but within the Firewall. It’s an experiment at the moment that is gaining a lot of traction both in thought behind as well as actual adoption and use.

The more people use these type of communication channels the more companies are going to learn both the good and the bad of that use and the more companies are going to try and control that use - however that control should not stop the use but rather companies are going to need to find the balance. What I am working on internally I believe is that balance. https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/8510 and http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=302 are two blogs covering what I’ve done so far, more will come.

Unfortunately I’m not at a stage where I’m not able to comment as openly as before (at least until May or so).

I just advised a roomful of IBM customers to bypass the gatekeepers/account managers by using social software to talk directly to developers and so on. don’t allow gatekeepers. twitter allows you to flow around gatekeepers, like water past a stake in the ground, when a support issue arises. nice discussion sam

@Sam I see Twitter steadily replacing email for a lot of my interaction. I don’t see email disappearing altogether, but I do see it being increasingly focused on only the communications that have to go through it.

The greatest thing about Twitter is the 140 character limit. Why? It keeps communications direct, on point, and actionable. I hate more than anything getting a long, complex email with about 8 different things I have to deal with. Getting that email processed and out of my inbox is a special form of torture, and it just spawns an exponential increase in follow-on emails that each take up more time.

Twitter, by contrast, forces you to get one thing communicated, asked, said, etc. in each tweet, which means that it’s easier to pay attention, respond, take action, etc.

I see a lot of chatter about behind the firewall versions of Twitter, but I’m not convinced. I don’t want to have two different streams to keep up with (inside & outside the firewall), plenty of ppl I work with are on Twitter and we direct message when needed, and I like the interaction grey area, just as Sam’s Two Way Social Computer graphic shows.

Sam - once again, a great post!

@Marilyn Pratt: “Yet when my colleagues @ccmehil and @finnern introduced the idea of wiki to me, I was amazed to see how widely it is being used and how folks are clambering for wikispaces. I also observed initial detractors turning believers.”

That’s music to my ears!

And Hugh MacLeod just left the Twitter building - good PR for him. As is this for enterprise Twitter. To use a Hugh’ism - rock on.

@James Governor, pretty similar to the model I’ve been preaching in this part of IBM for years… The reason for my blog/facebook/twitter/technorati+google searches is to keep the conversation going directly. Even though I’ve got 1000+ salespeople to talk to as well, being able to communicate directly with the customer is powerful. Now if I could do so in the 26+ languages for which my product ships, that would probably be even more efective.

Sam.. yes seeing replacement of email/IM to a lesser degree behind the firewall and is becoming a major mode of comms in front. I too was going to tell you to connec with http://twitter.com/ccmehil Both his internal twitter client and eventtrack are gaining more traction than our internal social networking tool.

As to driving change, I’ve been doing it for 6 years @ SAP. Its not about the concepts you introduce, only part of it. Its about how you go about changing the DNA of the organization to accept those new concepts. New concepts are the bait for driving change.

Sam,

I love the idea. You guys are doing something similar with Cleaspace X, although that’s more targeted and less serendipitous (this word is starting to be used a lot in Web 2.0 circles). The diversity of perspectives I get from my Twitter network is far greater than that of my internal social network in the office. If anything The Wisdom of Crowds has shown us that diversity is important for crowds to make wise decisions or produce correct information.

The question is, what is the critical mass required to derive value from socially-oriented tools like Twitter (Scoble says you need at least 50 friends http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/09/off-to-israel/), and are organizations large enough for a single worker to achieve said mass? I’m not sure.

I’ve got a kind of yes and no feeling. Yes, I want human interface extension, and yes Twitter is a milestone in this story. Not like your graphic, but in some other ways that I’m too tapped out at present to mention. Placeholder this thought and come back to it for later:

Computers aren’t the center any more. Humans are the center. Maybe they always were.

Great stuff, I like twitter because it’s very Ernest Hemingway-esque. Short, without adornment, and to the point. I was thinking about doing a twitter-like plugin in the CS profile for the contest as an experiment but ran out of time, maps was easier. I’ve already exceeded my 140 characters for this comment.

I am going to weigh-in here with Chris Brogan’s comment. I think putting the computer or hard-drive as the center of this discussion is misplacing the dialogue.

I think what we are seeing here is going to be tough for the corporate paradigm to prevent. Humans are the center. And humans will communicate. The exciting part of social media and the tools being created around the concept (the terrifying part for “corporate”) is that it is making communicating easier. With tools like Twitter and blogs we are expressing more ideas and LISTENING to more ideas than ever before.

The result, and I think the main fear of corporations, is that social media is creating very powerful and impacting freelance experts–even within our corporate walls. However, in doing so the corporate walls begin to fade.

My point: Because of Twitter and Blogs I know who a lot of people are and what they are good at, but I probably couldn’t tell you where most of them work. So, if I need an expertise I am calling the people, not their companies.

very Interesting discussion
In large organizations (public ones in particular) we face a weird situation where the technology adopted is developed and used to replicate the obsolete and utterly inneficient work flows, management structures and bureaucratic procedures that exist from the age of the paper only workplace.
The traditional lack of communication and knowledge sharing inside organisations, is kept even as new tools and technologies are slowly integrated… You are not allowed (not technically of course) to mail your director about something or to share information. You need to follow the command chain: you-> your superior -> his superior -> (…) -> the Director General. The same goes the other way round. The chances that information gets through the way up are very limited … So despite the fact that the organisation has adopted a technology (e-mail) that allows for the flow of information to be freed and the pyramid to be flattened (you->Director General) this is not the case … The process re-engineering needed never happened. The result is that sing new ICTs has made the bureaucratic characteristics of the organization even more prominent.
What is really weird is that the same General Director or CEO etc is probably “friend” to some teenager on facebook …
The increasing use of social networks among colleagues outside the firewall - as these are often not provided internally- is increasingly eroding the internal organisational structures creating ad’hoc teams and groups of co-workers that can finally easily collaborate online (google docs, yahoo groups, etc) that have nothing to do with official organigrams.
Lacking the vision and awareness / understanding at top management level is mainstream in public institutions, thus changes happen randomly, bottom-up in a way that is probably not benefiting the whole of the organization but small clans of power-users …

Twittering inside the organisation could be beneficial in my view, only as one of many different communication modes … I can’t imagine it replacing mail or blog entries or discussion forums ..

All these should ideally be part of an integrated environment, bringing together and structuring knowledge embedded in twitts, mails, blog entries/comments, documents, forum discussions, …

just some views

[…] Twitter: A two-way social computer?  Technorati Tags: Twitter , microblogging , blog , social […]

[…] Go Big Always - Twitter: A two-way social computer? Go Big Always is Sam Lawrence’s blog. (tags: twitter usage) […]

[…] Ok, here is something entertaining (And enlightening and educational at the same time) for an early Friday evening before we all get to start enjoying our weekends. But before I go into that let me share with you something else that I have been exposed to in the last couple of days that would make you think quite a bit. Remember the last blog post I put together over here on proving the business value of Twitter not long ago? Well, want to have something much more relevant and convincing with regards to how Twitter is shifting the conversations from the consumer market into the business world? Then go no further than to the fantastic blog post that Sam Lawrence, Chief Marketing Office at Jive Software and someone I first met through Twitter, although I have been reading his blog for a little while already, put together under the title "Twitter: A two-way social computer?". […]

[…] Twitter: A two-way social computer? […]

Great concept and awesome visual. I love using my two-way computer and how twitter allows anyone and everyone to join the conversation. I’m also seeing more work peers joining the twitterverse. Perhaps we are not too far away from the corporate social network (and two-way computer) as this NYT article suggests, http://snurl.com/2462s. Sorry, gotta run, I’ve got a huge email inbox to clean out!

[…] Go Big Always - Twitter: A two-way social computer? (tags: collaboration twitterific socialnetworks enterprise2.0) Rate This Post: […]

[…] det inte lika stressframkallande som den svällande mailboxen. Sam Lawrance på Jive Software har analyserat detta och har bl.a. denna mycket beskrivande bild av ovan […]

[…] Partnership’s motivation to sign up is neatly encapsulated in Sam Lawrence’s post over at Go Big Always: Twitter is nice because it strips everything away and focuses 100% on people and the economy of […]

Enterprise and the Twitter feature……

The topic of Twitter and the Enterprise is popping up yet again, as well it should - Twitter as a “feature” is ideal for quick and concise communication, it’s the water cooler, coffee corner and lunch room all at once and more reliable than any I …..

[…] Now imagine opening the flood gates inside an enterprise filled with 80,000 employees. The amount of updates, alerts and activity can be deafening. Granted, you don’t need to be connected to all 80,000 people at once but there’s still enough scattered demand to crush you under its weight. […]