by Jevon MacDonald
January 30, 2008 at 12:04 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
This is become more and more of an obvious trend to look out for: A twitter clone in the Enterprise. Some early tools are now sprouting up to enable cheap low-risk deployments of the necessary tools.
As I work on a more detailed post on the topic, I thought I would jot down some quick notes as to why I think this is a positive trend, but also why it will have some pitfalls.
Positive Results
- Forces reduction of hierarchy enforcing rules
- I say this because the more you constrain and layer access controls on “tweets” the less value they have overall, but more significantly, it directly reduces the benefit to the creator
- Personal Brand development – highly personal platform
- Crises discovery and management capability
- Increased awareness of ongoing work
- Interactions between individuals can strengthen their social-network ties to further inform other tools (like search, group forming, etc)
- Potential to outperform other tools in the rate of adoption (low barrier to start using the tool)
Potential Issues
- Immediate business value may not be apparent depending on the organization
- Low search value (individual entries to not usually contain full content on any specific topic)
- Must be device agnostic. Individuals who do almost all their email on a blackberry will need an appropriate version of an Enterprise twitter
I am just starting to form these thoughts. What do you think? Will Twitter be a disaster in the Enterprise, or will it be a hit?
Permalink
A couple of pointers for you, Jevon. First, check out Nathan Wallace’s experiments at Janssen-Cilag in this area: http://www.e-gineer.com/v2/blog/2007/12/building-enterprise-20-on-culture-10.htm. He’s got some learnings about why a standalone enterprise Twitter didn’t work.
I also posted about one of the potential use cases a while back (http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/niallcook/archive/2007/06/26/internal-twittering.aspx). Be interested to see if people think it’s still valid.
Niall
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DavidJanuary 31st, 2008 at 12:45 am |
I’ve been thinking how great an internal twitter client would be for posting system status messages. Honestly though my organization isn’t ready for it. People don’t understand why a wiki is a good idea, why a blog can be a great way to communicate or even why you don’t need to ask me “is it okay if we shut down the app now?”in an email – just send me a freaking IM! If we did use tweets for status messages I still would have to send out an email and update the (non-RSS) web page for the non-adopters.
“Will Twitter be a disaster in the Enterprise, or will it be a hit?”
Twitter-as-it-is will not be a hit!
But a twitter-like (easy to use) system or WordPress+PrologueTheme-like system that supports Andrew McAfee’s imagination in How to Hit the Enterprise Bullseye will be a BIG hit 
“I imagine that successful enterprise Facebook equivalents will have much more advanced tools to allow members to actively exploit their networks by asking them for assistance, pumping them for information, etc. I also imagine that they’ll let users post answers to their most frequently-asked questions, then simply point seekers to this resource.”
Am working on such a eFe (enterprise Facebook equivalent) – Please use NextBestAction.com.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Twitter in the enterprise is an idea that absolutely fascinates me. I believe that within 5 years something Twitterish will be as universal & ubiquitous as email.
BTW, brilliant pun there, with “Obvious.”
To answer briefly, I think it will be a disaster AND a hit.
The possibilities for leveling hierarchies, personal branding, career advancement, accelerating professional development and mentoring, opening communications and opportunities, teambuilding, knowledge sharing, managing events and remote teams, collaboration, etc. are wondrous to me.
That office politics, slacking, awkwardness and the potential for abuse will come with it is unsurprising. Then again, can anyone argue that the adoption of email wasn’t rife with the same concerns?
It’s a great question and I’ve been pretty preoccupied by it.
Maybe the key for enterprise adoption is that the big guy has to take the lead.
Many years ago I was responsible for the introduction of email into the investment bank at CIBC – yes I am that old. Launch day was about 10 days away and I was in Paul Cantor’s office with the briefing. All the technical issues had been nailed. What worried Paul and I was adoption.
This was the time when “Real Men” did not type and what few senior women there were did not type either as they feared being seen as secretaries. All managers had secretaries who looked after all correspondence. So there was a huge technical and cultural barrier to email.
Then Paul had an inspired idea. He called in his secretary and dictated a memo that went some thing like this:
“Next Monday our new email system will go live. So this is the last memo that you will receive from me like this. After Monday I will communicate exclusively using email
Of course it is entirely up to you if you wish to choose to still be in contact with me”
Oh it was so funny seeing the old guys pecking away at their key boards in the weeks that followed.
So if the big guy and a few colleagues in an enterprise were to make the commitment to Twitter it would get adopted very quickly I think
Microblogs are changing the world. So entreprises and schools can’t stay behind for ever. Some HRM officers do already check to web2.0 capacities of future employees.
Not having a LinkedIn profile nor a Twitter account already means to them not being tech savvy…
Marketing is discovering microblogs as well…
Even the British Prime Minister is represented officially on Twitter at this moment.
Pieter Jansegers
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