I have just started to demo our new Otter Networks service – it takes the best of web 2.0 tools and makes them available to communities inside and outside the enterprise. (You can see the slides that go along with the demo here.) After having done this for four groups, the first question that comes up is why not do this on Sharepoint? I have my own reasons which I will outline below. But I would love some additional help on articulating why or why not just do this in Sharepoint? Here are my responses:
1. Social Networking/Digital Identiy – Sharepoint is designed for internal collaboration via email and document sharing. The newest version does have blogging, wikis and RSS capabilities:

(From the Microsoft web site) MOSS 2007 provides a number of new features while improving the existing collaboration platform by providing built-in abilities for document management and alerting, adding new capabilities like blogs , wikis, and a Web Part for publishing and receiving RSS feeds.

But Sharepoint does not have built in social networking and rich profiling which we think is key for finding the right people to help you work. Each person in an Otter Learning Network is automatically given a weblog and a dynamic profile page that includes tags and aggregates all of the contributors you have made to the network. People, contributions and ideas can be searched for and tracked using RSS feeds.
2. User Experience – Web 2.0 consumer applications have been successful because they are open, easy, and fun. Sharepoint has a notoriously complex user interface which along with IBM, Jerry Bowles characterizes as “top-heavy style that aims to please IT by building in a lot of expensive control functions that frustrate end users and ensures that social software experiments are likely to fail in large organizations.” Otter Networks are designed to “‘consumerize” the experience of moving seamlessly back and forth between the desktop and web applications.” (Again Jerry Bowles.) We use a web service (iUpload) to customize how information is published and shared and integrate the best web 2.0 consumer tools for managing podcasting (Hipcast) and video (Brightcove) and the desktop (Netvibes). Otter Networks are open and simple in their structure thereby making it easier to build contributions and participation.
3. Cross network collaboration. Sharepoint is designed for work group collaboration inside the enterprise. But increasingly work is done inside AND outside the firewall. So as part of our service, we build and maintain a library of public materials (podcasts, videos, slide decks, pdf files, and blogs) that can be syndicated into each network and used by contributors.
4. Tagging. While Sharepoint does incorporate search, it lacks tagging—a web 2.0 feature that we feel is critical to collaboration. Tags enable personal categorization of information inside a network. Tags make it easier to find and track both information and people. Tags make collaboration simple and seamless.
5. AJAX Desktop. Sharepoint now incorporates an AJAX-like desktop in its MySite feature:

My Site that fully utilizes the functionality of a SharePoint site. Users can create lists, document libraries, or subsites under their My Site and customize the viewing of these sites for both their personal and workgroup views.

While I have not yet tested this, it doesn’t look like it has the flexibility or the personalization of the AJAX desktop. (It would be great to hear from someone who has used My Site and who can compare and contrast with an AJAX Desktop.) For demo purposes, we have integrated our first Otter Network with Netvibes. Netvibes is very much like Google desktop and Pageflakes and Microsoft Live. We have selected it because it supports secure RSS feeds and it has a good API for developing modules that integrate with our network. We can set up a nice podcast player in Netvibes, for example, that draws in all of the podcasts in your network. And we are working on enabling publishing from Netvibes to the network. All of these things make the user experience simple and fun.
6. Me-First design. Sharepoint and other enterprise collaboration systems like Lotus notes are missing a key ingredient in today’s social networking systems: a focus on the individual rather than on the work group. Stowe Boyd described this as “Me-First design”:

The basic model of 90’s era collaboration, a la Lotus Notes, is all about the group. Information was managed in group-based repositories, then passed around for review, or published to intranet portals via customized apps. Information era workflows where people are first and foremost occupiers of roles, not individuals, and the materials being created are more closely aligned with groups than individuals. Web 2.0 social tools—largely—work around a different model. Social networks—explicit ones like MySpace and Facebook, or implicit ones in social media—are really organized around individuals and their networked self-expression.

We have built Otter Networks from the ground up with a focus on the individual. Our design incorporates the structure described by Boyd here:

I start with a profile of myself, since I am the center of my network. I characterize my interests, history, job, whatever. This could include feeds, queries, and all manner of dynamic information, not just static text. I tag myself, to make it easier for others to discover me. The buddylist is the center of the universe, so I next start to link to those people and sources most important to me. Their traffic—flow of insights, recommendations, and presence—is the most important thing forming my world. And of course, I want to share my traffic with my network: links, recommendations, posts, presence. All my downstream buddies, those who want to read my traffic, can access it. But we don’t need groups to do so. Instead of groups, we need groupings: tagging the elements of network traffic is sufficient.

This design philosophy of building around the individual rather than the group profoundly changes the user experience. In the new web the individual contributor is at the center and everything emanates out from there. In an application like Sharepoint, the individual exists to serve the group and is empowered simply to publish and read inside a shared private space. Our experience with bringing web 2.0 inside the firewall is that blogging and rich profiles give people a new kind of reputation and expertise. They make it easier to present yourself and to be found. This is really transformational in terms of engaging participation and contribution. In the Otter Network, the individual is given recognition and her expertise is made manifest.
So please post your thoughts on this pro and con….