Social networks = email 2.0, will enterprise sticks to email 1.0 ?

Darren Waters, Technology editor, BBC writes how Social networks are the new e-mail , I find one of his observation particular interesting:

Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at the firm, told BBC News: “It’s been interesting to see the way people change the way they communicate.

“You used to e-mail content to people and you had to choose who you wanted to e-mail it to and you didn’t know if your friends even wanted to see it.

“Now you can passively put something out there and let people engage with it.”

The simplicity and ubiquity of some of these services is beginning to see activity feeds and status updates replace many of the uses to which e-mail was once put.

Everybody working in an enterprise setting know email is a tool that increasing is failing, some of the key problems are

• irrelevant mass mails (no way to choice what to be informed about/follow)
• few engage with communication by email
• it doesn’t work as a tool for knowledge sharing
• it isn’t the right tool for collaboration

Use of social networks has the potential to change this and most companies want to improve these areas but hasn’t included facilitation of social networking and use of web 2.0 tools in their strategy.

Social networks have already had a huge impact on how people interact outside the work place, no doubt it will find way to the workplace too – graduates will soon expect web 2.0 tools and social networking in the same way as they expect email, phones and instant message today, technology does not move from enterprise to the personal use any longer, but the other way round now.

I think Karl Rouhe is spot on, the challenge for for enterprises and their HR and communication team is to enable masses of  communicators rather than communicating to the masses.

It I will be interesting to see how social network and web 2.0 tools will change how people engage, collaborate, and share knowledge,

Tags: social networking