The social networking scene is moving fast with ever-changing tools and feature-rich services that provide users with increasing personalization and flexibility. Join provocative blogger, Dennis Howlett in this highly interactive session as he discusses new platform choices such as Twitter and Seesmic. Particular emphasis will be placed on the utility for these platforms and services in the Enterprise environment.Speakers:
- Dennis Howlett, Industry Blogger
- Chris Brogan, Vice President, Strategy & Technology, CrossTechMedia
- Laura Fitton, Founder, Pistachio Consulting
- Loren Feldman, President, 1938 Media
- Rachel Happe, Research Manager, IDC
The dominant medium for this is Twitter.
The first question is why should we care?
Laura - A great way to bond weak ties.
Rachel - A version of social networking, but happens much quicker.
Loren - Sees no use for the enterprise. (mostly as a skeptical use of internal company communication)
Chris - Does not see twitter itself as the enterprise solution, but as something analogous.
Loren thinks that Twitter is just taking away productive time. Its a time waster.
Laura sees it as a quick and easy way to ping for experts.
Rachel sees that building relationships is important. Twitter is just another communications tool. Serendipity flows through the network.
Laura thinks twitter is no worse than reply all.
From the audience, are the concerns about twitter any different than concerns about IM.
Twitter is not about getting accountability in the messaging. It is a different tool.
Luis (http://twitter.com/elsua) thinks Twitter is a killer app for people who travel.
An audience member brought up the scenario of setting out a twitter for something that needs a quick response. The next step is to elevate. May be the wrong tool. Try the phone.
(There are lots of ways to waste time. Even if Twitter is time waster, at least you are wasting your time building your network. Instead of finding mines. Or finding the tiles of Mah jong.)
Loren thinks video and audio deliveries may be more useful than the 140 characters of Twitter. Of course one of the limitations on audio and video is the limited mobile bandwidth in the U.S. (It is also harder find. Google has not figured out how to index the content of audio and video files.)
"Twitter is not going to change the enterprise." Loren thinks it is just more layers of people not saying anything.
Establishing, building and strengthening relationships is key to the success of the enterprise. Can Twitter help?
Loren: The blog is more important than the micro-blog.
There are still no vendors for Twitter inside the firewall. They have no plans for a white label product for the enterprise. Some of the platforms are working on something.
During the presentation, Laura was displaying her Twitter flow on the screen using Summize. She also managed to crash Andy McAfee's blog by tweeting several links to his posts.
- Something New Under the Sun http://tinyurl.com/4nsha6
- Ties that Find http://tinyurl.com/yucbcv
Seems Loren is a party pooper. Twitter definitely has promise inside the enterprise. It could be used by colleagues working on a project that need a place to dump intelligence in one place, used by execs to see where status of a project is or what people are working on. In a large group, this is not easy - you said enterprise, not small business.
ReplyDeleteAnd with all the types of ways to communicate on twitter, .com, broswer, twhirl, mobile, voice via jot - there are enough tools to meet everyone's comfort level.
And, yes even to build a network. There are 8 buildings on my campus alone. Easy way to build contacts in different deppartments
Not only was Loren a party pooper, I think Loren would embrace being called a "party pooper."
ReplyDeleteIn the end, Twitter is just another way to communicate. I find it interesting because with its open API it is easy to integrate into other places. It updates my facebook status, I have a widget on the blog. I have a widget on my internal blog.