Social Networking in the Enterprise

CIO Insight Staff Avatar

Updated on:

Status update services, sometimes called

microblogging, took off in 2010. A Pew Research Center study released on Dec.

8 revealed 8 percent of American adults who use the Internet also use Twitter.

Using social media tools in the enterprise pits open sharing against corporate

controls. It also opens a range of integration questions about how best to

connect people and applications in an activity stream that is immediately

relevant, secure and collaborative.

IT vendors, including Salesforce.com, Socialtext,

Socialcast, Yammer and a host of others, have taken notice of the social media

explosion by releasing a new wave of social media tools for the enterprise. The

big bang that is the birth of social media platforms includes the initial

formation of specifications and integration tools that seek to ease

interconnection problems, while maintaining the fast-flowing and lightweight

nature of social media interactions.

It’s fair to say that business users aren’t looking

for another place to search for the information necessary to do their

job. And IT managers in larger enterprises may encounter multiple

social media platforms inside a single organization.

What’s the best way to use social collaboration

tools with partners? Is there a better way to integrate social media and back-end

systems? The answer today is that a tangle of integration tools and a dearth of

standards mean that IT managers must pay careful attention to a wide range of

integration tools to curtail client creep. To this end, there are some emerging

efforts that are worth watching.

For more, read the eWeek article: Socializing in the Enterprise.

CIO Insight Staff Avatar