You Don't Want Facebook for the Enterprise -

Facebook has no place in the enterprise. As enterprise social technologies first arrived in the workplace they needed a way to express what they did. At that time the most direct analogy was to exclaim that the tools were "Facebook for the Enterprise". A more appropriate analogy is needed. For our organizations to succeed we want a "LinkedIn for the Enterprise".

A quick examination of the DNA of the tools quickly reveals why this makes sense - it boils down to Personal Relationships vs Domains of Expertise. In a recent post by AIIM Blogging Expert Bertrand Duperrin he accurately proposes that "Web 2.0 is about people and Enterprise 2.0 is about employees". An employee is judged on their achievement against domain specific goals and practices. Let's dive down into three concrete examples that highlight the value of centering enterprise social solutions around Domains of Expertise.

Example 1 - Mission
LinkedIn: "Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful ... your success as a professional and your competitiveness as a company depends upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust." - http://press.linkedin.com/about

Example 2 - Knowledge Sharing
LinkedIn: Forums, news and updates centered on specific domains related to a user's Domain. LinkedIn has a high signal to noise ratio.

Facebook: Personal photos, videos, messages. Facebook has a low signal to noise ratio.

Example 3 - Applications
LinkedIn: LinkedIn does not support user developed applications directly within its interface, but provides a stock portfolio of applications. Some examples are Polls, Reading List by Amazon, Blog Link, Google Presentations and Huddle Workspaces - http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=application_directory

Facebook: Supports a wide range of user generated applications. The most popular are FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, Birthday Cards and Treasure Isle - http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php

Facebook has done a tremendous amount to popularize formal social networking, but tosupport an organization's business we need something smart and relevant. If someone steps back to think about social networking in the context of the workplace, the proper analogous tool from the commercial web becomes exceedingly clear. We want a LinkedIn for the enterprise.

Comments

Submitted by Mike Clarke June 15, 2010 - 10:58 AM

I get John's point about LinkedIn being more professional. Work is supposed to be about getting the job done, expertise and professionalism and LinkedIn has that focus. However, when you think about the workplace you bring a lot more to the office than your skills. A lot about work is personality, interests, relationships and community. For example, when you arrive a few minutes early to a meeting you might be talking about the latest football results or what you did on the weekend. It is human nature.

The unstructured "noise" of FaceBook has a very human quality to it. However I find it changes how you see FaceBook and what you post to it. I find that I speak to my business on Facebook and often get "please translate ;)" comments from my family and old high school chums. They are good natured reminders that it is not all business.

The other aspect is what content you put "out there" and how you would build communities of interest around your work in FaceBook. The dynamic aspect of Facebook and the organic way it recruits ceates a more flexible and natural way of building communities. However now comes the "what is a record?" question and how do you reign it in...

That is the more perplexing question for enterprise use of FaceBook, and LinkedIn for that matter. For ediscovery you are faced with the daunting task of external searches on silo cloud applications like FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter, etc.

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Submitted by John Brunswick June 15, 2010 - 12:48 PM

Mike,

You bring up 2 very good points - human nature and ediscovery around these technologies.

On the human nature front I would propose a separate "channel" (community / grouping of pages) within the platform to contain the water cooler type of communication. At some of my prior employers we did something similar to this - as culture is definitely important. This isolation is able to satisfy the human connectivity in the workplace, but cut down on the noise that could permeate through business function related areas. I would be curious to see how other companies have approached this. Thoughts?

Regarding ediscovery it would make sense that organizations run local / private instances of platforms that allow control and retention over their information. Placing corporate data into the public cloud could make compliance with some legal demands difficult, if not impossible.

Cheers,
John

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Submitted by Taino Cribb July 20, 2010 - 9:04 PM

Hi John

Thank you for your post about Facebook. I agree that Facebook does not belong in an organisation, unless there's some business value for bringing it in, that goes beyond "employee engagement". I am an avid user of both Facebook and LinkedIn, and haven't found any 'business value' which outweighs the risk of introducing Facebook inhouse yet.
Whilst LinkedIn is definately the type of collaboration which has value within an organisation, it unfortunately doesn't carry the same understanding amongst people who do not use the internet to connect with people beyond email.
Luckily SharePoint 2007 has opened up the possibility for organisations to rapidly deploy solutions at low cost. However the basic concept of collaboration is not fully understood, nor collaborative behaviour embedded yet in organisations. This presents a huge change management challenge for most organisations. Many people are still in the 'email' paradigm and may not have experienced what Facebook or LinkedIn is all about, however they've HEARD of Facebook and understand the concept. By linking Facebook with E2.0, people can relate easier and can more easily conceptualise generally what you're actually talking about.

Perhaps when behaviours are more common when people start relating to the specific functionality of the sites, then we practitioners should be aware of the awareness shift and relate to E2.0 in a more specific way. Thank you for the post John, it is very good to be aware of the message we're sending.

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Submitted by Søren Kragh Lindbo October 20, 2010 - 9:09 AM

This issue has especially come up in Denmark and in busineses here.

Facebook has the highest amount of users per capita inhabitant here and naturally enterprises are asking whether or not to integrate it in their CMS or not.

I have seen them get really scared about integration with Facebook. In my current company we have solved it by developing a small add on on Sharepoint that shows the data from Linkedin profile on the MySite profile page. that way all data is updated all the time. People are most likely to keep their Linkedin accounts updated, because simple logic tells you that people rarely keep their linkedin profile out of date because of business opportunities, new jobs etc.
Employees rarely update or even fill out their profiles on an intranet, all you usually get on such a profile is phone-number, whereabouts they sit in the organization, building number etc. If there is no company policy on maintaining your profile in-house, people don't give up this information. We have made the application so it can ofcourse blog out certain posts on the Linkedin profile, so you manager can't see you are looking for a new job or interested in new job opportunities. I basically displays your achievements, education and so on.

I think that is a way to go, making it very clear for the enterprise that sharing is caring!

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Submitted by Greg Cook July 21, 2010 - 8:46 AM

I agree with the comparisons between Facebook and LinkedIn. Definitely, LinkedIn is geared toward business professionals and networking at that level.

However, Marketing people are going to gravitate towards using Facebook because of the large user base and the possiblities of connecting with the customers to your business. I don't believe everyone in the organization should have access to Facebook or be able to post to the corporate fan page(s). This should be filtered through a committee / team / review panel of some sort and then the approved message should be captured internally for records management purposes.

I truly believe the only business value that Facebook has is for marketing. It allows your organization to connect with people on their terms, using their chosen platform. No longer do you have to drive people to your website, you can connect with them on theirs.

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Submitted by Rich Blank August 19, 2010 - 12:47 PM

No...you don't want facebook for the enterprise if you senior leadership and executive team thinks of it as a waste of time because of how they view their own teenagers using it. Yes, Farmville can be annoying...but for some people it connects them and engages people just like any other game. The perception of Farmville may be a time-waster...but the value is socially connecting people no matter where they are physically located. Yes...linkedin definitely has a more professional perception in people's minds. And perception matters especially for the decision makers and execs who generally tend be in 40s and 50s.

However, if the corporate culture understands the value of social computing platforms -- be it FB or LinkedIN.....then what you call it really doesn't matter. Everyday I see business uses of FB and it's a way to have a more personal relationship with colleagues, partners, and potential customers. Simply dismissing Facebook -- the largest social network of hundreds of millions of connected people is not very smart and a very old school way of thinking. And executives who don't embrace Facebook will see their companies continue to spin their wheels instead of innovating and finding news channels of growth.

Innovation has happened and will happen from the ground up....So call it "Facebook for the Enterprise" and encourage senior business leaders to preach innovation & openness. Inspire junior engineers to create some "internal facebook-like app" that fundamentally changes the way teams interact, develop products, share information, and relate to each other! I guarantee if the top down inspires people vs. controlling enterprise social computing .....workers will respond and the bottom line will improve. Facebook governs an application for 500 million people....I'm sure an organization with 10k, 20k, 30k or 100k users can figure out a way to govern social computing so it doesn't stifle creativity and innovation or lock down users from developing social applications in a business context.

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