Linking social networking (SN) to unified communications (UC) has generated some interesting conversations. Some of my points have been validated and others refuted. It has been a learning experience worth sharing.
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I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Lyle Fong, founder of Lithium Technologies, earlier this week on the topic of social networking and how it is and isn't similar to unified communications. Lithium Technologies is a hosted social networking provider. What makes them stand out from other vendors in this space is their relentless focus on adding value to customers through the application of business intelligence. Lithium provides over 200 business intelligence metrics its customers can leverage to determine the business value of SN implementations. There is no guessing here, this is fact based.
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At the highest level of abstraction, social networks for enterprise businesses are a natural extension of forums. The difference today, according to Mr. Fong, is that nearly everyone is online. When forums and message boards were popular, the participants were those that were technical and engaged in the technology industry. In the connected world of the 21st century, social networks take forums to an entirely new level. The SN is now able to truly leverage the “wisdom of crowds,†where everyone has an opportunity to contribute.
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Social networks take advantage of the modularity of technology. Just as open source was designed for wide access and contribution, the same idea applies to social networking – take advantage of what adds value, leave the rest. In the case of SN and UC, the influences become clear: presence and the ability to track who is online and participating is part of the SN. The ability for 1:1 interaction does not add as much value to the community knowledge base, so while the functionality is there, its use is discouraged. Mobility is supported by both SN and UC. Video is also a strong component of both technologies.
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brandstation - on-demand social network
brandstation - on-demand social network platform. core features. API for interoperability. Enterprise knowledge sharing for internal or extended member community with full management and moderation control. Focused team / brand based engagement (yes every team get's it's own blog).We love tech but actually one of the really interesting areas with creating social networks is the engagement insight e.g. know where the conversation is and what's being said. We're really excited about our management interface cause we've been developing that with community moderation partners to make the whole interface super usable and intuitive. Then coming up, we're going to be looking at profile sharing... (err throw in an ad marketplace we seem to have created whilst sleeping over the last year) then watch the sn activity + analytics + blogosphere metrics and oops we're looking at an engagement recommendation platform.
brandstation.tv - on-demand social network platform