I went to a seminar entitled, "IT-Enabled Enterprise Collaboration - Where, When and Why?" at the Babson College Center for Information Management Studies on Friday. There were three excellent speakers. This entry discusses David Millen's talk on Social Networking tools at IBM. Millen is a Research Scientist at the IBM Watson Research Center in Cambridge.
IBM has invested significant time and effort in building social networkingtools that sit behind the corporate firewall. These tools support collaboration within the organization. More important, they strengthen the 'loose ties' among colleagues within the company.
The most impressive application Millen described was Beehive--an opt-in social networking site. Beehive is Facebook customized to work behind the firewall of a large organization. From a Microsoft perspective, its an extended version of SharePoint's My Sites. Employees can post profiles and share photos, lists and other information about themselves.
The feel of beehive is much more Facebook than corporate intranet. It's much more social and personal than corporate. You can find a java expert, but you can also find a jogging companion for your trip to Tampa. You can learn about the people you're working with, developing stronger ties and hopefully collaborating more effectively.
At IBM and many other large multi-national companies, there is a great deal of collaboration among ad hoc teams. Beehive should give members a better feel for their colleagues.
The other two applications were Dogear--a social bookmarking site--and Cattail--a file sharing site. Dogear was based on del.icio.us and other web-based social bookmarking applications. It allowed users to bookmark web pages both on the internet and behind IBM's firewall. It is a good way to learn what your colleagues are interested in, track down more information on topics. Cattail allows you to post files for sharing, see who downloads your files and see how they are shared throughout the company. The applications interact with blogs and other web pages through mashups and rest APIs.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, I usually don't blog about IBM. I made an exception, because I felt that there work opens a window into how large organizations can adapt some of the web-based social networking tools, like Facebook, LinkedIn and del.icio.us.
I think the impact of these tools can be significant. They can strengthen the ties between co-workers. This will make it easier for remote workers to collaborate. They can also strengthen the ties of workers to the company. Finally, they could become a requirement. As more new workers enter large corporations, they will expect that the tools that they use on the web will also be available behind the firewall.
The major downside of these tools is there lack of easily measurable ROI. In the current economic downturn, I would guess that many large companies would not be willing to invest in these tools.
I salute IBM for sharing their research so widely and encourage you to check out their site for a look into the future. I'm very interested in seeing how Microsoft incorporates ideas from Facebook, LinkedIn and del.icio.us in the next version of SharePoint.