The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog

Webinar: Double the Value of Your Social Software

2008-11-12T11:12:53-08:00

Are you using multiple social software apps in your organization? Each one is individually valuable. But ironically, these collaborative apps end up as new data silos, not integrated with the wider organization. Tying the apps together improves accessibility and is the foundation for employee social networks. This was the gist of our earlier blog post Fix the Enterpise 2.0 Silo Issue.

We're holding a Webinar - Double the Value of Your Social Software - to discuss the benefits of connecting enterprise 2.0 apps, and how Connectbeam does this to significantly increase their value. We welcome your attendance. Here are the details

Thursday November 20

1:00 pm EST, 10:00 am PST

Click here to register

Economic Downturn: Putting a Dollar Figure on the Value of Enterprise 2.0 for Companies

2008-10-17T10:46:00-07:00

The times they are a-changin'. In a space of weeks, the global economy has slowed. Employees are concerned about their jobs, companies are preparing for negative growth. Everyone's in a tough period right now.

For the Enterprise 2.0 industry, this is indeed the time to demonstrate the business case of social software. On the FASTForward Blog, Jevon MacDonald penned a great piece: In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. Included in the post is a quote by Enterprise 2.0 consultant Thomas Vander Wal:

The interconnections and interactions between people spark great value, but the more costly traditional tools have missed out on this great reservoir of value, but the newer lower cost solutions offer these gems up wonderfully with a little coaxing.

Enterprise 2.0 improves three critical components of companies' success: innovation, productivity and responsiveness. During times of economic stress, productivity rises to the top in terms of priorities...

Do more with less.

In that spirit, we want to discuss a fantastic academic paper that studies the effects of IT, multitasking and social networks on companies. Specifically, the researchers studied a multi-office, geographically dispersed executive recruiting firm.

The results are eye-opening, and provide empirical evidence for the power of social software to improve productivity.

How to Do More with Less

The study Information, Technology and Information Worker Productivity was produced by researchers at MIT, NYU and Boston University. The team evaluated over 125,000 emails, detailed accounting data, completion rates and team membership for over 1,300 placement projects, and surveys with most employees. What were they looking for? "The fine-grained relationships among information flows, IT use, and individual information-worker productivity."

The researchers found statistically significant relationships among social networks, technology use, completed projects and revenues for project-based information workers. Here are the four findings of the research team:

The structure and size of workers' communication networks are highly correlated with their performance
IT use is strongly correlated with productivity
Productivity is greatest for small amounts of multitasking, but too much multitasking reduces productivity
Asynchronous information-seeking promotes multitasking

The full report includes many, many nuggets of valuable information. We want to focus on two outcomes of their research that put a dollar figure on the value of social software.

Putting a Dollar Figure on the Value of Social Software

A key finding of the researchers was this:

A one standard deviation increase in betweenness centrality in the email network is associated with approximately $76,000 greater revenue output per year controlling for human capital, demographic variables and use of the ESS system.

A one standard deviation increase in network diversity is associated with approximately $83,000 greater annual revenue output.

What this report gives us is a dollar figure for the value of social software inside companies! The research computed significant productivity gains for workers with superior positions on two attributes:

Betweenness centrality
Network diversity

Both of these attributes are core to the value of social software. But let's define them first, because the terms sound daunting.

Betweenness centrality: What's the probability that an individual will fall on the shortest path between any two other individuals? This attribute measures the strength of an individual's connections to other employees. Sort of a probability-based LinkedIn.

Network diversity: Measures the degree to which an individual's contacts are connected to each other. If your social network consists of people who all know each other well, your network diversity is low. If your social network has a lot of connections that don't know one another, your diversity is high.

Let's examine one of the attributes, network diversity. The $83,000 improvement in revenue production referenced above was for a one standard deviation improvement relative to the mean. Graphically, here's what that means:

Employees who connect to a wider range of their colleagues generate higher revenue for their companies. In this case, an employee in the 84th percentile of network diversity delivers $83,000 more in revenue annually than average. Why?

If all you ever see is the same perspective from your cohorts, it can be hard to figure out solutions to problems that are new to you. As the researchers note in their study:

Information in local network neighborhoods tends to be redundant

Soliciting input from a greater array of co-workers brings new ideas, information and perspectives to an employee. This becomes a competitive differentiator, and a basis for better collaboration across the enterprise. The question, as always, is how to find and build relationships with others who can help beyond your normal internal contacts?

Now here's where this becomes an interesting opportunity for companies. The results calculated for these high-performing employees were based on their email social networks. In other words, these employees' email contact lists present an after-the-fact look at how they're connected.

For an employee looking to improve her social network, it's hard to use email in this way. A random email over-the-transom will do little to foster a new, vital connection internally. It lacks context. Unfortunately, most systems inside organizations are ill-suited to provide the context for what co-workers are working on, as Thomas Vander Wal notes above.

As a result, diversifying an internal social network is slow, and likely stagnant, for all but the most proficient workers.

So how does one break out of the small, insular social network?

At Connectbeam, our application lets workers identify their expertise, interests and projects. It aggregates the workstreams of employees, providing a way to find the information that colleagues generate. Colleagues that an employee already knows well, as well as those beyond her normal social network. Suddenly, there's a better awareness of others' work and context for reaching out to them.

If you're a statistical type of person, the objective is to move the average of the normal distribution to the right (increase average production per employee) in the above graphic, and to tighten up the curve (everyone enjoying the fruits of network diversity in a similar way).

Check out our product page for more information on how we improve both network diversity and betweenness centrality.

And for companies looking to get more done with less in these tough economic times, recognize that social software provides a solid, statistically based way to improve productivity.

Five Moves of Power Users in Enterprise 2.0

2008-10-10T11:03:57-07:00

Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee recently penned an interesting post, Should Knowledge Workers Have Enterprise 2.0 Ratings? The post examines the idea of applying ratings to workers based on their activity with social software applications. Ratings would be part of the toolkit of adoption techniques.

The comments to his post are a good discussion about the problems with this approach. These ratings hold the potential to undermine the spirit of "let's get people talking and collaborating" that defines Enterprise 2.0. That's not to say the idea is wholly without merit. But "ratings" carry negative connotations in this context. Maybe there are "levels" that employees could earn, without the stigma of having a low "rating".

His post did cause a discussion here at Connectbeam. Rather than focus on ratings, we wondered:

How would a power user operate in our application?

There are actually a lot of ways. This being a blog, and we're going to keep things tight. Here are five that we came up with...

The Power Moves

1. SEO your social profile. On the web, those whose success is built on people finding them are very good at maintaining their profiles. Profiles are a basis for being found (e.g. LinkedIn). Inside a company, same rules apply. The power users will be unusually good at building their Connectbeam Social Profiles with key words, along the lines of search engine optimization techniques. The Connectbeam app lets you find people in two ways:

People search based on terms in their profiles
Recommendations based on common expertise, interests and projects

Want to ensure your reputation precedes you and co-workers know what you can do? Maintain a vibrant Social Profile.

2. Build a good-sized social network base. Out on the Web, there are individuals who have successfully built up a following of ten of thousands of individuals on Twitter and on their blogs. There are two benefits to developing your own community:

You can learn a variety of information and viewpoints from others
You can get your message out to a large number of people, who will in turn talk about it with their networks

Now those kinds of numbers are pretty daunting. Inside the enterprise, power users don't need that big a network. But having a good-sized network does provide them with an information advantage, and a fast way to communicate out to the organization at large.

How to build out a good-sized social network? See #1 above, and read on below.

3. Comment, engage, discuss. A key understanding of social networks is that people want interaction. For many social media first-timers, that can be one of the biggest challenges: how to get the conversation going. The Enterprise 2.0 power user understands this, seeks out areas of interest, and interacts. This simple act does two things:

It creates a bond between the power user and others
It moves the ball forward in terms of drawing people into the larger enterprise conversation

A central point of Enterprise 2.0 is to collaborate. Having power user instigators who can push things forward is a tremendous value. And they get the benefit of building a strong internal network.

4. Celebrate and communicate the workstreams of others. Recognition and acknowledgment are important motivators of employees. In Connectbeam employees will see bookmarks, wiki entries, blog posts, etc. The power user will find those nuggets shared by others, and celebrate them. This is not easy - if one re-shares things that others don't find useful, the power user quickly loses status.

But having the talent to spot useful information shared by others accomplishes two things:

Raises awareness for valuable information that will help co-workers and the company
Motivates the original source of the information to connect more closely with the power user

In Connectbeam, one can simply re-share a bookmark from one Group to another, including attribution in the comments field. Or one may maintain an internal blog that lists the "best of" information shares. Or even the occasional email pointing to the bookmark.

5. Share information with a vengeance. Build up the set of information you share with others. Share relevant information often. Be it in web bookmarks, wiki entries, blog posts, etc. If the content shared is relevant and useful, the power user's name tends to show up a lot when others in the organization are looking for information in the Connectbeam application. Don't think that goes un-noticed.

Want to develop a reputation for expertise and understanding markets/technologies/customers/etc.? Share with a vengeance.

Those are five moves of the Enterprise 2.0 power user. What we like about them is that they are not only good for an individual's career, but also are good for the organization. If you think of any others, feel free to leave a comment.

Fix the Enterprise 2.0 Silo Issue

2008-10-02T10:48:55-07:00

Came across a nice post by CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne on KM World, Enterprise Social Software Technology. In the post, he articulates the functional underpinnings of social computing software. If you're tracking the Enterprise 2.0 space, it's a good read.

A couple quotes caught our eyes here. First:

Vendors are also "socializing" existing software products. On the main, that is a good thing, but it should not be confused with dedicated social software tools. In the absence of accepted integration standards, adding things like tags, profiles and instant messaging services to longstanding applications can create just another set of siloed communities.

A core principle of social computing is connectedness. Adding social computing features to existing enterprise silos certainly helps, but fails to connect the larger organization.

Here's the other quote from Tony's post:

But it is equally clear that no single vendor in the marketplace excels at all or even most of those services. In fact, many successful social software case studies revolve around the dedicated application of a standalone tool.

We have not yet seen the emergence of a full-suite vendor that addresses the different needs of the market. Expect to see enterprises with multiple social computing apps for the foreseeable future.

Companies' Opportunity in Connecting Enterprise 2.0 Apps

Finding information in the various social computing applications certainly is a function of enterprise search engines. Enterprise search engines are great for what they do:

Index content from different applications
Apply term frequency algorithms to rank search results

But there is a layer of meta data, of employee judgment in the creation and sharing of knowledge that is not captured in typical enterprise search engines. This data includes:

Who created or saved the information
Tags to provide richer meaning (how was this information useful)
Groups to put the information in context

Capture this information, and you can create a connected layer of social information that opens new possibilities for employees:

Find useful information faster
Figure out quickly which colleagues might be able to help with a project
Create a single go-to repository for the valuable content that is produced and shared throughout the organization
Build their own social networks based on common projects and interests

Yes, we love enterprise search. We even have connectors ready to go for Google Enterprise Search and FAST. But there's much more to the story when it comes to the content generated in the various social computing silos inside companies.

Why Use a Jet Engine When a Feather Will Do?

2008-09-26T07:01:56-07:00

We enjoyed ourselves at the KM World Expo. Nice to get out of the office, meet companies working on their own social initiatives and see what other vendors are dong. In a conversation with one visitor to our booth, an interesting use case came up.

Connectbeam maintains a unique Social Profile for each employee. These profiles let people identify their skills, interests and projects, and include the information they have shared and created. Through out-of-the-box connectors and APIs, these Social Profiles can be incorporated into a number of enterprise applications, including portals. In addition, these Social Profiles are the basis for employee searches.

Our booth visitor was intrigued by this, but asked about this use case: Assume a number of people inside an organization include "Lotus Notes" in their list of skills. Some are help desk staffers others are architects and designers. What happens when employees forget their passwords, and search the company Social Profiles for "lotus notes"? Wouldn't a Lotus Notes developer get bombarded with requests for password resets?

We talked about a couple scenarios.

The Jet Engine Scenario

First, imagine a system where the Social Profiles tapped into an Issue Tracker system. This system records all requests for password resets, and which employees closed them out. From this, a list of Lotus Notes password reset gurus could be developed. The Social Profiles tap into this intelligence to identify who the go-to people are for password resets.

And it addresses the problem of the Lotus Notes developer who shouldn't be bombarded with password reset requests.

It would take a special algorithm built inside the Issue Tracker app to generate these results. The Issue Tracker would integrate to the Social Profiles, and update them for the new skills an employee has. The custom code and integration on the Issue Tracker app would need to be maintained and incorporated into any upgrades...

Yeah, pretty daunting isn't it?

The Feather Scenario

Or, there's a simpler way to tackle the problem. A Lotus Notes developer simply adds this to his profile:

** I do not reset Lotus Notes passwords. Please call x1234 for those requests. Thank you. **

Problem solved.

We love social software. Give people the tools, and you'll be amazed what they can come up with.

Connectbeam Spotlight 3.0 Is Now Available - Here's the 'Why' Behind the New Release

2008-09-23T10:01:04-07:00

One of the great things about working with our enterprise customers is that we get a ringside view into what they want to accomplish and what issues they are facing. Companies see the benefits of collaborative information sharing, and are working hard to connect employees and knowledge. Andrew McAfee articulated well the value of information sharing and collaboration in his bulls eye post, which provides a great analysis for the value of internal social networks. The companies with whom we talk are moving aggressively to create authentic, useful employee social networks.

With that as backdrop, we're pleased to announce today the release of Connectbeam Spotlight 3.0. Spotlight 3.0 adds a number of features to the Connectbeam application designed to make information and expertise easier to find and share. Full details are available on our Products page. Here are the release highlights:

Integration with leading enterprise applications
Feeds of user generated content from Enterprise 2.0 apps
Social Profiles with both employee-provided knowledge and experience, and real-time updates for their work activities

There's a lot to this release, and the Connectbeam website and data sheets will tell you more.

We wanted to give you a sense of why we released Spotlight 3.0. The reasons shed some light on the direction of the enterprise market.

In-the-flow: Michael Idinopulos of SocialText wrote about the differences of putting tools in-the-flow or above-the-flow of employees' daily activities. This is a critical consideration for vendors in the social computing space, and it's an approach we pioneered here at Connectbeam. To maximize knowledge touch points, and user adoption, inside an organization, we're big fans of in-the-flow tools. That's why Connectbeam integrates with leading enterprise apps. We want to put information and internal resources right at the fingertips of employees.

Connect enterprise apps: Companies have significant investments in their existing technology stacks, both financially and operationally. They also tend to have a collection of best-of-breed apps, particularly in the enterprise social computing realm. Full-suite Enterprise 2.0 solutions are still a ways off. So the problem they're experiencing is a lack of visibility for the amazing amounts of user generated information that has been created inside their walls. Connectbeam sees tying together these different apps as a major benefit for companies. Through our Connectors and APIs, we pull in content created from across the enterprise, including wikis, blogs, news feeds, forums and other applications.

Workstreams: Connectbeam's roots are as the leader in social bookmarking and tagging inside the enterprise. Fundamentally, what we bring is the ability to tap employees as sources of relevant data and filters for what's valuable. From this, everyone in the organization gains. With Spotlight 3.0, we're extending this philosophy by integrating the workstreams of employees. Workstreams include bookmarks, wiki entries, blog posts, forum discussions and other activities. There's tremendous value in providing a single repository where these workstreams:

Can be organized and are searchable
Form the basis for social networking and collaboration
Can be discussed
Are integrated into the everyday applications that employees use

That's a brief explanation for how we approached Connectbeam Spotlight 3.0. Hats off to the team for a great job pulling this one together.

The Lessnau Lounge on Social Bookmarking

2008-09-08T02:54:00-07:00

John Lessnau has created a number of web sites including LinkXL.com that has provided a new brokerage model. He also publishes The Lessnau Lounge that offers Twitter feeds. It covers electronics, internet marketing, linkage, pop culture, and social media. It is interesting to see a site that shifts through and offers Twitter tweets. Twitter is on the rise. TechCrunch wrote that in March 2008 there over a million users, and over three million Twitter messages a day. Aggregating them around topics is a good thing.

His Twitter tweets about Social Bookmarking as of August 27, 2008 mentioned one of our blog posts, The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog: ROI for Social Bookmarking: Very Large Possibilities. I am grateful for this and that was how I learned of the Lessnau Lounge.

Cory Treffiletti’s Companies to Watch

2008-09-04T01:39:00-07:00

Cory Treffiletti writes a blog about marketing strategy and fundamentals. He is President and Managing Partner for Catalyst:SF. Cory's been in interactive marketing and advertising since 1995. He writes a weekly column for Mediapost.

Cory recently published a post, Company to Watch: the Bonus Issue. These companies were drawn primarily from the Stanford Always On! Summit that occurred earlier this month. I was pleased to part of panel, CEO Showcase, at the event. I was also honored to see Connectbeam included in Cory’s list of companies to watch. Cory’s blog is worth looking at if you are interested in emerging trends in marketing, especially through new media.

Research Shows Majority of Fastest Growing Companies Are Adopting Social Media

2008-09-02T01:25:00-07:00

ReadWriteWeb recently reported on a follow-on study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. This research into social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US has found that familiarity with and use of social media nearly doubled in 2008 from what it was in 2007. Now 77% of respondents report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.

I was especially pleased to see than social networking topped the list on familiarity over online video, blogging, message boards, wikis, and podcasting. It was also on top in 2007. Consistent with this social networking also top the list on usage in 2008, moving up from third in 2007. Last year “don’t use any” was the top category. Now don’t use any” is fifth, only barely beating podcasting. Asked to rate importance for business strategy, 44% said very important and 34% said somewhat important. This is all good news for social media and is consistent with prior research.

It was also interesting to see that while 11.6% of Fortune 500 companies currently have a public blog, 39% of the Inc. 500 companies are blogging. This is not surprising as these smaller firms are often more progressive.

I found this study through Keith De La Rue who writes the blog AcKnolwedge Consulting for the Australian firm by that name. I found his blog as Keith linked to my post on Forrester Reports that Corporate Social Networks will Augment Strategic HR Strategies. There is a nice coverage of enterprise 2.0 on AcKnolwedge Consulting blog.

TradeVibes – Web Community for and about Startup Companies

2008-08-29T01:43:00-07:00

I recently discovered TradeVibes as some people came to this blog through the Connectbeam description listed on this online community. TradeVibes says that it “finds “cool and interesting startups and adds them to TradeVibes. By leveraging the collective wisdom of our community, TradeVibes separates the best startups from their competitors. Come share your opinions, or just come see the ratings, opinions, and discussions about which startup will be the next star.” I am honored that Connectbeam is included in this discussion.

TradeVibes explained that their long term mission is to democratize business information by increasing transparency. Ultimately, they believe this will increase innovation and encourage entrepreneurship globally. It was founded in 2007 by four early employees of PayPal: David Li, Peter Chu, David Kang, and Doug Ihde. Their office is located in Mountain View, California. They have a TradeVibes blog. This is a useful effort and I wish them luck.