Busy day today at the Enterprise 2.0 show! I was on a customer panel on social computing earlier today with Microsoft, EA, Battelle, Watson Wyatt, and the MN Dept of Education. I participated by discussing some of the Army’s experience with social computing and communities. Great panel with lots of excellent insights on making enterprise 2.0 actually work in the public and private sector. Speaking of which making enterprise 2.0 work, here’s three more of the principles for enterprise 2.0 from our new guide.
Principle #3 – Crowdsource Relevance
Most social networking sites and communities have so much content, that it can be overwhelming for users. These sites, to varying degrees, make use of crowdsourcing, where users essentially do the work of “classifying” the information. For enterprises, crowdsourcing is a powerful tool which enables the organization to take mountains and mountains of information and connect users with the best and most relevant content. Just a few examples of crowdsourcing in action include where users bookmark information (which is an implicit endorsement), users mark something as helpful, users visit something (implies popularity), users tag or classify something (when you upload the content) which provides important meta-data. Crowdsourcing, when used in conjunction with social filtering becomes a powerful tool for enterprise 2.0 initiatives, as the information is classified and aggregated for users enabling them to get the most value out of their interactions with the community. Principle
#4 – Use Play and Gaming
Enterprise learning professionals are increasingly relying on play and gaming as a key element of corporate training and development programs. They are doing so with good reason, as play and gaming are engaging in a very deep way. For those people into gaming, their games and communities are very consuming, and keep them coming back. A good example of this is the popularity of online gaming communities such as World of Warcraft or the interactive components of gaming consoles like Xbox Live. These same principles can be applied to social learning, and enterprise 2.0 applications. Taking the principles of gaming and applying them to scenario training offers a very compelling and engaging way for enterprises to keep users active within a community.
Principle #5 – It’s a Service
A major difference of intranet communities versus social media or social networking sites, is that users come to the communities because they want something. Users are likely looking for information or need a solution to a specific problem.As such, the organization needs to keep in mind that the community is a service and the community’s goal is to provide the best possible service to users. For example, if you include questions and answers as part of your community, you need to ensure that people are successful by treating it as a true service. Mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that unanswered questions are answered, questions are routed to the right people, and new answerers are enlisted. That many questions get answers, how many are “good”answers and how long it takes for users to find answers .
Principles 6, 7 and 8 to come tomorrow, so check back. In the meantime, the entire guide with all 10 principles is available here.
Very good stuff. While GovLoop is not specifically Enterprise 2.0, I see how many of the principles can apply here as well.
I read a very interesting article in Wired magazine about the evolution of Facebook and its inevitable collision with Google. The idea is that Facebook is becoming, amongst other things, a human driven search engine. Do I search for a new doctor by using Google, or do I ask my friends? I think that the idea is relevant when you begin to look at social networking as a service. Good point though; if you unleash social networking as a service, it’s critical to be able to shine a light on factual and or relevant information. Good stuff, keep it coming.