Telligent Business Community

Teens, more than any other age group, care about their friends. It's the continuation of real-life friendship (and the creation of online ones) that has driven the tremendous growth of MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc. It's about the social graph. That's why more than 50 percent of Facebook users are under 25, even while older users are joining quickly.

From a large and diverse pack, Forrester singles out Interpublic's R/GA, WPP's VML, Sapient Interactive, and WPP's Ogilvy Interactive as leading all interactive agencies "because of their overall strategic skills, execution and development capabilities, measurement and analytics skills, social and emerging media prowess, unique company visions, and high client ratings," according to Forrester analyst and report author Sean Corcoran. WPP's Wunderman, Razorfish, and Omnicom's Organic also ranked as "leaders" in the space, while slightly less auspicious "strong performers" included Omnicom's RAPP, Interpublic's Draftfcb, Rosetta, and AKQA.

Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, along with blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and other messaging and collaboration tools, are finding their way into the workplace as enterprise applications. Analysts from Nielsen Norman, IDC and Gilbane say front-line workers are leading the charge, forcing senior management to go with the flow or stem the tide. The Facebook Generation wants to network with colleagues to communicate and collaborate.

Twitter and Myspace are different companies in different markets but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they share, and will always share, the exact same problem. MySpace and Twitter are hugely popular for uses neither company anticipated. The mission of each company is so vague that their products are stretched and molded into a variety of different uses. Instead of targeting and building their business around one of these users they take their sudden popularity as a sign they have a killer product. They don't.

ESPN regards social networks such as message boards, conversation pages and other forms of social networking such as Facebook and Twitter as important new forms of content. As such, we expect to hold all talent who participate in social networking to the same standards we hold for interaction with our audiences across TV, radio and our digital platforms. This applies to all ESPN Talent, anchors, play by play, hosts, analysts, commentators, reporters and writers who participate in any form of personal social networking that contain sports related content.

The U.S. Marine Corps has banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately. "These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. "The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel... at an elevated risk of compromise."

No question social media is the hot topic in pharmaceutical marketing. Some companies are taking a few baby steps, but everyone is worried about FDA regulations -- or lack thereof, because there aren't any specific to social media. Industry watchers have demanded the FDA create them or hold a public hearing on the issue, but my prediction? Neither will happen. The FDA will continue to maintain the position that it's the message, not the medium. In other words, the same rules apply whether it's social media or a print piece. So accept that and move on. You don't have to stop using social media, but you might have to take a some risks. A few companies will get warning letters, but most won't. And all of the cases will help set the precedents that will eventually empower more companies to use social media.

I agree with part of this one: "Vendors' growing emphasis on specific solutions in lieu of feature creep." Yes, solutions are clearly a trend, but a big differentiator here is the partner ecosystem. If you ask most vendors for specific solutions, most of the time you'll get partial pieces of the solution. It's very difficult for most pure-plays to have the horsepower to deliver end-to-end. Make sure you understand your vendor's alliance model.

About one month after the release of our Shift Index report, one question that keeps coming up is whether we can offer a succinctly define what the Big Shift is that our Shift Index seeks to measure. Given the magnitude, depth and far-reaching impact of the Big Shift, succinctness is a challenge.  At the highest level, we would characterize the Big Shift as moving from a world of push to a world of pull.  In other words, given the growing uncertainty in the world around us, we must master a new set of techniques required to access, attract and accumulate resources to unleash peer based learning in far more flexible ways than conventional push programs permit.

Community features are spreading from "Web 2.0" to "Enterprise 2.0." Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features.

Lots of big brands are embracing social media, but which platform is most popular? At least as far as Fortune 100 companies go, Twitter (Twitter) easily takes the top spot, according to a recent study from PR firm Burson-Marsteller. According to their findings, 54 percent of the Fortune 100 have a Twitter presence, 32 percent have a blog, and 29 percent have an active Facebook Page. Moreover, at companies using only one of these tools, at 76 percent of them, the tool of choice is Twitter.

Companies must fundamentally review the existing balance of structure, control and distribution of authority versus the ease of communication and information access. In nearly every organisation there are ample opportunities for removing structure and control without introducing additional risk or compromising the operational efficiency. Pushing more authority towards the lower layers of the enterprise and creating/allowing additional communication platforms or channels will compensate this removal of structure and control and will create opportunities for interesting Web 2.0-style "side-effects". Unfortunately, these are complex exercises. While this is a very reasonable approach for any forward-looking company, it certainly is not without impact for the individuals concerned. Especially on the middle-management level, the impact can be devastating. But do we have an alternative?

Unfortunately, despite an growing body of encouraging case studies, evidence, and research, the jury is still out on total impact social computing will have on businesses. This return will even vary widely for many organizations for a number of reasons will explore below. At present, the uncertainty is simply because that there are not enough organizations that have incorporated social computing approaches (which encompasses the full range of social software as applied to business that include social networks and Enterprise 2.0 to things like crowdsourcing and social CRM) across their lines of business for us to get a complete enough picture. Even the ones that have done it, haven't done it long enough to see what the results actually are.

The main problem is that people's real-world social graphs change often and automatically, while their virtual representations on Facebook change mostly uni-directionally and manually. In other words, friends come and go in real life; but on Facebook, they usually just come. Friends lists tend to get bloated over time because users have a harder time defriending each other virtually than in real life. And even if they are going to defriend each other virtually, it has to be a deliberative effort, unlike in real-life when you just stop seeing certain people. This problem is particularly acute for Facebook, because its earliest adopters were college students or high school students who have undergone significant changes in their lives over the last few years. They no longer see many of the people who they once friended in school. And they aren't inclined to remove these friendships from Facebook because they're lazy, fatigued or simply too polite.

The dangers of posting sensitive personal information on social-networking sites are well known, but a researcher has now revealed how data mining these sites can dig up undisclosed personal information.

The future of search almost certainly involves social networks, social graphs, or social filtering in some capacity. Companies will live or die by whether they get the "social" part right: creating the right level of intimacy, trust, reliability, social connectedness, and accuracy in their results listings. Of course, this specifically means that their user experience must at least meet or, preferably, exceed that of Google's. To achieve this, we must first stop arguing over the different flavors of search. Real-time search. Social search. Semantic search. These distinctions are essentially meaningless, especially when we can't even agree on definitions and when each of their boundaries remain undefined. Instead, we should recognize that they're all part and parcel of personalizing and contextualizing search for individual users. Let's stop playing the "name game" and start thinking holistically about how each (and all!) affects and improves what we think of today as "search."

Intel IT has deployed an enterprise-wide social computing platform that combines professional networking tools with social media such as wikis and blogs, and integrates with existing enterprise software. Read how Intel IT transformed collaboration across Intel while addressing top business challenges such as helping employees to find relevant information and expertise more quickly, breaking down silos; attracting and retaining new employees; and capturing the tacit knowledge of mature employees.

Twitter cofounders have talked about the importance of discovery in interviews and at conferences over the last several months. This week a new design for Twitter.com went live featuring top tweets and a search box to find more of what you want, but Twitter and many other web companies could improve discovery much more by incorporating other players' data.

When you're focused on the word of mouth upside, make sure you're covering the basics. Once you get people talking, they are going to talk about everything.