 | Level: Introductory S. E Slack (sally@sslack.com), Author and business transformation communications consultant, Freelance writer
21 Aug 2007 At its core, social computing is the use of social
software--tools that support social interaction and communication. With Web 2.0, social
software for large enterprise affects architects by making it more difficult to
govern through formal authority, because power migrates from the institution to the
community in many ways. Learn how embracing the trend can promote consistency and
cooperation across a development community and help you maintain influence and build
acceptance as social communities grow and intensify.
By now, you've probably heard about Web 2.0: the concept that the Web can
be more than a vast collection of Web sites. Instead, say supporters, the Web can
be a full-fledged, interactive business computing platform that offers any
application you need. The end result is a worldwide platform that effectively
eliminates desktop computing applications in favor of Internet-based computing
applications. Behind this basic concept is the critical but often overlooked idea
that users add value to the Internet and its platform role by adding their
collective intelligence to the sites they visit. Think Wikipedia, and you have
a general idea of this collective intelligence concept.
Add to Web 2.0 the concept of social computing--the intersection of
social behavior and computing systems--and you can begin to see how Web 2.0 is
much more than the Web as a computing platform. Despite the prevalence of
Web-based applications and other tools, Web 2.0's most noticeable impact on
business in the last three years or so has been in the area of social computing.
From an organizational perspective, the use of social computing is part of what's
called Enterprise 2.0.
Everywhere you look, someone has a MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn page; a blog;
an instant-messaging program; or e-mail. And these tools are being used almost to
the exclusion of other, more traditional tools such as face-to-face meetings and
personal phone calls. This trend toward social computing affects architects of
every discipline in a big way: If you and your organization aren't actively
engaged in using social interaction and communication tools, you--and your
organization--will be quickly left behind. This article explores methods you can
use to stay in the loop--and maintain your role as an organizational influencer
and leader.
Social computing basics
Fifteen years ago, personal computing devices were expensive. The idea that kids
might have their own cell phones with text messaging or other personal digital
assistants (PDAs) was laughable. But over time, costs have dropped so low that
most people have at least one PDA that can support texting, e-mail, or instant
messaging. These devices, along with modular content and shared computing
resources, make connecting with other people fast and easy in a now-global
economy. Add to that the fact that the old social structures common with large
enterprises ("you'll communicate when and how we want you to") are rapidly being
replaced with these easier connections ("I'll communicate when and how I
want to"), and you have a social structure in which communication is run by the
people, not for the people.
Another key element of social computing is taken straight from the backbone
premise of Web 2.0: Collective intelligence is better than individual
intelligence. For example, consider Amazon.com. Its main pages reflect purchasing
suggestions based on what others in the Amazon community are reading and talking
about; these suggestions change instantly according to daily and even hourly
purchasing and reviewing trends. The mechanisms and principles underlying such a
system are a direct result of Web 2.0's social computing concepts--that
information produced by groups of people can be used to enhance how the system
works.
In this new social structure, people take cues from their contemporaries.
They're increasingly less willing to be led by the organizations they work for and
are more likely to voice dissent. Power is shifting from institutions to the
communities within the institutions; creating value in these communities means
relinquishing control to some degree in order to encourage input. Corporations are
discovering they can no longer rely on top-down communication tactics; they're
finding more success by using the same kinds of tools their target audiences are
already using on a personal level. By becoming part of the community, IT
can target a corporation--or an architect--and use employees and business
partners to its advantage by making them part of the solution and encouraging
their input for improve the organization's collective intelligence.
Social computing tools
for architects
Social computing tools range from items such as blogs and Really Simple
Syndication (RSS) to social networking sites and wikis. If you think those tools
aren't having much of an impact on the world, consider this: According to
Forrester Research, between August 2004 and July 2005, blogs doubled in use.
Today, more than 27 million blogs are being written. As much as corporations would
like to ignore their effect, these blogs create niche communities that easily
influence customer and employee perceptions of what can and should be done in the
corporate world.
In the world of Web 2.0, everything is decentralized, distributed, and
participatory. But in the architect's world, the opposite is true. It's important
to maintain some level of control over architectural designs; without it, the
integrity of a design could quickly disappear. But what if you knew that people
were discussing your design and making incremental changes to it without you? What
if the changes were based on solid ideas, but you weren't in the communication
loop? You'd probably wish you'd known about the change and used it across the
organization. And what if you could seek the little guy's input at your
organization to bypass cumbersome management middlemen? You could do that, if you had the
right social computing tool.
The questions for an architect are which social computing tool(s) to use
personally to maintain influence as an architect, and how to use these tools in
the organization. These two questions can be answered in similar ways. The
following are some basic social computing tools and ways you can use them in a corporate setting:
-
Social networking sites. If you need to link to others in your industry
(not necessarily within your corporation), consider joining a social networking
site such as Facebook or LinkedIn. The beauty of these sites is that you can
often make important contacts by doing little or nothing. Create a profile, add
a few friends to it, and then sit back as people link to you. When someone links
who you believe could be valuable to you, initiate contact and begin a
relationship. That's when the work begins--but at that point, the work will
likely be worth it if you've discovered a new source for information or
collaboration.
-
Corporate blogs. These are terrific tools for things like executive
communications, project status reporting, or sharing information about a project
to help others understand why changes are coming. The key to any blog is the
ability to communicate in real time, but the most important aspect is the
comment capability: Readers can write questions to the blog author, and answers
are provided for all the world to see. Blogs are also wonderful tools if you're
mentoring someone--the peer-to-peer interaction can take place in an informal
manner that isn't time consuming. With a mixture of individual and project
Weblogs, information tends to categorize itself; people can easily subscribe to
the blogs they care about.
-
Intranet sites with RSS feeds. If you or your division has an intranet
site, use the RSS feed to stay up to date on new information. Every intranet
site should have an automated feed; others in the organization can subscribe to
it as needed to obtain information that may change hourly or monthly. The
subscription concept works on the premise that people will access the
information they need through self-regulation; creators of the content don't
need to worry that the "right" people aren't getting the details. This makes
corporate communication on any level highly effective: Those who want to know,
can; and those who don't, don't need to be bothered by yet another e-mail
announcement.
-
Corporate wikis. With a focus on collaboration, wikis are terrific for
a variety of tasks: You can collect business and technical requirements in one
place that everyone can easily access and edit, for example; or post release
notes, error reports, or issue-tracking information. In many ways, a wiki can
replace an intranet site--it's a lot less hassle to update, that's for sure.
The main point is that wikis are simple to use. That makes them highly
accessible to almost everyone in the organization because no special talent or
knowledge is required to use them. Once several wikis have been created, you've
got your own corporate "wikipedia" of sorts--an ongoing source of information
that anyone can access. (By the way, wikis can be made private if necessary
through the use of passwords and IDs.)
Now that you see how to use social computing tools to your advantage, let's look
at a totally new concept that's infiltrating the world of Enterprise 2.0.
Design systems with
social proxies in mind
Humans are notoriously social animals. Since ancient times, when Neanderthal
camps were packed up and moved dozens or hundreds of miles to attend social
gatherings, humans have gone to extraordinary lengths and even compromised their
own safety to stay in touch with other humans. It's no different today--we'll
fly thousands of miles or drive hundreds of miles to visit family or friends for
just a few days. Then, once we're together, we watch each other closely for
nonverbal cues: Is someone yawning during my presentation? Must be time to wrap
things up. Is she laughing at my jokes? She must like what I'm saying. We're
very concerned with what others say and do--the social behaviors that each of us
exhibit.
Staying sensitive to social behaviors and cues when we're with others is
important to social computing success. However, IBM Research has been examining
social computing since 1998 and has found that because we're literally blind in
the digital world, attempts to communicate in that arena can be awkward and
labor-intensive. When you work with digital systems, it's important to provide a
social context for the people's activities. Instead of imitating the real world
(through the use of videos, for example), use the concept of social
proxies.
Social proxies are visual representations of who is present in an online
conversation and what those people are doing. They provide the online contexts for
the social behaviors we exhibit. For example, one of IBM Research's first social
computing systems targeted communication support among work groups. Called Babble,
it was a persistent, chat-like environment that let people see who was present in
the virtual room. As a result, people could make inferences about who was
participating in the virtual conversation. Babble's successor, Loops, is a
Web-based system that added shared tabs and bulletin boards and runs on top of
IBM's infrastructure. The research team is expanding Loops throughout IBM to
groups who let the team study usage of the system and who can show a likely
benefit from its use.
The shared nature of a social proxy makes it useful to a group; the activity of
the social proxy is seen by the entire group, so it breeds feelings of obligation,
peer pressure, and imitation. In Figure 1, prepared by Thomas Erickson and Mark R.
Laff of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center for the The Design of the 'Babble'
Timeline: A Social Proxy for Visualizing Group Activity Over Time (see Resources), you can see how the social
proxy from the Babble system appears to users. The large circle is the room that
contains the conversation, and the smaller dots are people participating in the
conversation. As a person becomes active and "speaks" (types), their dot moves
closer to the center; when their activity ceases, their dot moves closer to the
outside over time. Dots outside the circle represent people who have left the
conversation. In this illustration, five people are active in the conversation,
two appear to be listening but basically idle, and one is logged on but not
participating in the conversation.
Figure 1. The Babble social proxy
When you design with the concept of social proxies in mind, you're designing a
visual system for people to become a part of, not just use. Social proxies can be
used in a variety of ways--but the main thing to remember is that they encourage
people to participate because they can "see" the social cues being exhibited by
others.
Increase your influence
To this point, I've assumed that your organization is ready for social
computing. But you may find that most people in your organization have never heard
of social software or don't understand how it can be used in a business
environment. In that case, you've got some work to do as far as educating your
management teams about the concept and helping them understand how it can be used
to benefit the organization. You can start by designing some minor elements into
your designs: Corporate blogs and intranet RSS feeds are great places to start
because they encourage participation with little action on the user's part. Don't
build in advanced functionalities if your organization needs to learn to crawl
before it can run.
On the other hand, if your organization is eager for social computing, go for the
most functionality you can get with your budget, and start implementing tools
quickly. Build in a usage study: Are people using the tools the way they were
intended? Are they using them in large numbers? If not, why not? You should work
with corporate communications teams, too, no matter which tools you use. They have
the most knowledge about communication trends within the business and will be your
biggest supporter because social computing tools are a terrific way to communicate
on any level.
One product to consider if you're new to designing with social software is
IBM®
Lotus® Connections. This is IBM's first venture into offering social software
outside the company; it includes five basic services (Profiles, Communities,
Blogs, Dogear, and Activities) to get your organization up and running quickly
with social computing. You can even get a demo of the product if you like; check
Resources for more
information.
After a path has been chosen, you can increase your influence over your
corporation's use of social computing by using the tools exhaustively. If you're
launching corporate blogs, create one of your own and write about the project. If
you're testing simple RSS feeds on the corporate intranet, for example, create
your own social computing project site and link to others so that people can get
the feeds from your site and discover why RSS feeds are being implemented. Let
people know why a particular tool was chosen and how it can benefit employees.
Summary
With Web 2.0, social software for large enterprise is affecting architects by
making it more difficult for you to govern through formal authority as power
migrates from the institution to the community in many ways. Embracing the trend
will not only help you promote consistency and cooperation across a development
community, but will also help you maintain influence and build acceptance as your
organization's social communities grow and intensify. Now that you know what
social computing is, use it to your advantage in your next design.
Resources Learn
Get products and technologies
Discuss
About the author | 
| | S. E. Slack is a Studio B writer and author with more than 16 years of experience in business writing. She has also been an executive and business transformation communications consultant to IBM, Lenovo International, and State Farm Insurance
Company. She is currently writing CNET Do-It-Yourself Digital Home Office Projects:
24 Cool Things You Didn't Know You Could Do (McGraw-Hill) and is the author of five other books. |
Rate this page
| |
