In-house Facebook?
According to Business Week, this is what the big companies are now doing, ie providing an internal social networking alternative.
By luring employees into a network, companies hope to leverage their skills and contacts. But they also hope that all that collaboration will cut out time that’s now spent mailing documents and e-mailing comments.
A bit optimistic perhaps. Seems questionable whether such homegrown facebook alternatives will actually provide a substitute for the real thing or just an additional channel. And how comprehensive is Sharepoint in any case?
Originally published on wonkhe.com at /blogs/in-house-facebook/.
Casey
Why reinvent the wheel though? Why not just use Facebook?
Round at ours we are considering starting a staff group, which people would voluntarily join, with a news feed application which people could choose to have.
This was the topic of much discussion at an Internal Comms shindig in London yesterday – opinion was divided between those who didn’t want to have their boss as ‘their friend’ and those who thought that differential access permissions were designed for just such a purpose.
Apparently Government departments are now shutting down access to Facebook – this seems daft when such networks at work are a way of overcoming deep silos and leveraging personal networks to get stuff done without worrying about internal politics and red tape… Social capital in fact.
(Nothing like a conference for firing up the enthusiasm!)