Recently we have been quite busy in preparing and organizing events that did not leave time to systemize and arrange my collected thoughts about all those discussions and informal exchanges I had with experts and practioneers in the field of Enterprise 2.0 during the last months. Today I am quite locked to nothing more than accompanying Bertrand at his pre-conference workshop for our E20 FORUM in Paris tomorrow. This leaves time to sort out my ideas that are turning around my head already for weeks.

It’s about the emergence of the E20 idea within the corporations. A lot has been said and written about the necessity and potentials of the new forms of collaborations and communications by using social software. Quite a few contributions have even predicted a big bang of change in the enterprise world. Others have criticized this vision and labelled the E20 thingy a “crock”. The truth is - as always - in the middle because E20 - as so many other business innovations - is not emerging in one step but is dependent on a cultural change within the corporation that again happens slowly.

So to explain the state of E20 we have to take a differentiated view on the different stages of the E20 emergence in the corporations. For each stage I see different people being involved in the diffusion process of this idea. They have different motivations regarding the E20 subject that serve more or less towards the big vision of E20. But they all contribute their share towards the diffusion process of this idea. Therefore I’d like to compare the diffusion of this idea with the dissemination of a virus:

(0) At some point someone is initiating some social software projects in the corporations - mostly under the radar of any strategic decision. These projects are mostly departmental projects with a small group of co-workers involved. There are quite some examples in which the IT departments started using some kind of wikis for documentating IT projects. In other examples some tinkerers (and yes I am not talking about the Generation Facebook but about tinkerers because I do not think it is a matter of age!) have installed or introduced some kind of social software e.g. microblogging service as Yammer in their departments. According to the image of the virus dissemination I’d like to describe this stage as “localized infections”.

(1) At the second stage I have observed quite a lot of companies in which the communications department came along the Web 2.0 thingy in the first place. Quite a lot of them have perceived this Web 2.0 thingy as a new way of communication format - in the terms of using social software to get people more involved into the messages corporate communications wants to send out. This in mind they might install corporate blogs to initiate discussions and feedback channels or add wiki or social networking functionality to the intranet in order to centralize the knowledge capturing and sharing. In regard to my analogy to the virus dissemination I’d call this the “first outburst” - as these initiatives have created quite a lot of attention within the enterprises. But in the long term most of these project could not gather any critical mass of participants because they have been set up as top-down initiatives to improve the impact of corporate communications and not been used to enhance the information flow. But we must not underestimate the effects of these projects. Because even they might have failed or not as supportive for the E20 vision in the long run, they are important for the further dissemination of the E20 virus - as they show the strategic relevance of social software within the corporation. This said these project will be indirectly supportive towards the growth of the grass-rooted projects.

(2) Eventually the growth of some of these grass-rooted projects will call the attention towards the department that is in charge for the organizational development. They will analyse and try to “decode” the effects of these projects. Eventually they might realize the business value generated by the improved information flow and the enhanced knowledge sharing within these projects. They might try to take over the control of these initiatives and turn them towards a corporate initiative. This is the point at which steering committees are been created and the subject of E20 becomes a strategic issue. But though there are thoughts about the enterprise-relevance most of the enterprises in this stage will not reorganize completely at this point. Because the realized business value is mostly generated “above the flow” and not “in the flow” of the business value chain. And as the enterprise is driven primarily by the success of the value creation in the line of business and not by some kind of enhancement in collaboration and information flow - only service companies that are primarily dependant on knowledge sharing for the business lines will succeed with the E20 thingy already at this point. Examples are for example CSC or Booz Allen Hamilton.

(3) Therefore the next stage in the diffusion process I see within those projects that deploy social functionalities towards the IT systems of the line of businesses. Examples for this I see in the Business Innovation Community project of Daimler (that is an open innovation platform installed by the business development department), the social enhancement towards CRM processes as well as the emergence of “personal learning networks” promoted by HR departments. According to my analogy I would call this stage the “virus variations” stage as in most cases there are more than one department that start a strategic E20 initiative.

(4) Finally as each of these different initiatives grow towards strategic relevance the management board eventually sees the demand to “streamline” the initiatives in order to effectively balance the benefits on the enterprise level. At this point they will approach the crossroads of the E20 success or failure as the “streamlining” can be organized as a top-down centralization of the projects which will kill the grass-rooted movements of each project. Or - the “streamlining” will lead towards a deconstruction of the business model because the management board as well as the corporation is “viciously infected” by the idea “to let loose” and “to open up” in order to gain new business value.

As a result the enterprise might eventually reach the final stage of a new form of organization that I do not want to describe at this point - as it would be quite hypothetically as I have not come along enough examples that resemble this stage.

To reply upfront to the critics of the above describe sequence of diffusion stages - there is no statistical evidence to this image, it is only a personal observation and conclusion towards the different stages of E20 infection. It might be an answer towards the question why the “big bang theory” won’t work for this kind of projects because the E20 thingy is a cultural change that must emerge slowly to all parts of the corporation and leads eventually towards a change of the business model.

Looking forward to any comments.

The last two days there has been some discussions (see here and here) about the announcement regarding the alliance of Hinchcliffe & Co with Michael Krigsman’s Asuret for a so-called “Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0” service offering. As Dion Hinchcliffe was in Munich until today I took the chance of interviewing him what this buzz is all about - and we talked about this new approach as the next stage in the maturity lifecycle of E2.0 consulting service. But here we go - make your own opinion about it:

Sevenload Direkt

What do you think about the approach? Is the “proactive risk monitoring and governance” (as I would call it) the missing point for securing the success of E2.0 initiatives?

While cleaning up my inbox I stumbled upon some old mail conversations of our advisory board regarding a dogmatic discussion about whether Enterprise 2.0 is an "evolution" or "revolution". From my last post on the classification of use case it becomes clear that I am very much on the "evolutionary" side of the discussion when it comes to how to fit the social applications into the enterprise application stack. But on the organisational dimension of the discussion I very much agree on the arguments that successful E2.0 initiatives need a reframing of the organisational structure of the enterprise. But instead of bothering you with my opinion I would like to point out some of the great statements from the discussions of our advisory board.

The discussion all started with a statement of Mark Masterson regarding the missed aspect of integrating social applications with the enterprise business solutions:

As I’ve said elsewhere , I think that we spend much too much time talking about implementing social networking software silos ("build a wiki, and they will come"), and much too little about baking SNS into existing domain and task specific systems. Bjoern, you suggest something quite similar in your recent post , where you speak about this under the "Being Complementary and Integrative" bullet point.
I have elsewhere made the argument that one way to approach the problem would be to marry up SNS functionality with BPM software (read it here ). But not everyone is convinced that this is a good idea — there are some who responded to that (and other, similar ideas elsewhere) that BPM would be
poison for SNS — that the structured processes a BPMS implies are anathema to collaboration, never the twain shall meet.

In response to this Lee Bryant brought up the point that just enhancing the excisting processes with a layer of interaction to support crossfunctional sharing of knowledge and collaboration is not enough because a complete reframing of the idea of the organisational structure is needed in order to be successful in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives.

Existing businesses have structure and they have process, but as Mark says, the problem lies in trying to automate or de-humanise process, rather than with the idea of process itself. In terms of structure, a  question on my mind is how we can re-design businesses and organisations around the ideas of flow, aggregation, networks and collaboration, rather than just think about how we can work within the existing structures that we find in large businesses today. For example, looking at the segmentation you have applied to the audience  and tracks, I find it interesting to note that Intranet and ECM departments should simply not exist. Arguably, neither should central knowledge functions, which are better located within lines of  business. So the question is, what are the organisational design implications of E2.0 tools, techniques and ideas?

Last but not least I want to include the propositions of Bertrand Duperrin on this - whom I would put on the "evolutionary" side of this discussion as he proposed foremost a "rethinking" of some key corporate values in order to really foster the network effects of social applications in or above the "flow":

1. think in terms of system (dynamic flows) rather than organization (set org-chart)
2. Think "global improvement" (macro vision) rather than "functional optimization" (micro vision)
3. Think "increase performance" rather than "cost reduction"
4. Think "pull" (listen to the client’s voice..and client may be internal) rather than "push" (offer and product approach)
5. Think "individual" (what he is, what he knows, what he likes) and not "function" (what he has, what he must do, his status)
6. Think "ongoing experimentation" (permanent beta with quick retro-action loops) rather than according to the "test/validation/production/generalization".
7. Think "immediate generalization" (in order to make it possible for unexpected things to emerge) rather than "progressive generalization" (because it contradicts the economic benefits driven by the network effects)
8. Replace "think" by  "act" in the previous points
9. Don’t use hierarchy as a substitute for trust.

So - what do you think on this? What are your experiences? At the E2.0 SUMMIT will be addressing this discussion with different sessions - to really get a in depth understanding of it and eventually to provide some strategic implications. In order to enhance this discussion upfront I would be very interested about your opinions and views on this.

What is Enterprise 2.0 all about? IMHO - this is the most asked question when talking about this topic. As several bright heads have said before instead of theoretically talking about the Enterprise 2.0 vision we need to talk about use cases and case studies that show and unveil the power of this so-called “social business“. At the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT we have defined four different use cases that are going to be discussed along different best practices presentation. And while setting up an explanation of these use cases two days ago I ran along this nice post of Larry Hawes discussing the “nexus of business process & ad-hoc collaboration” that led me to an idea of a more broader view on the topic to be discussed in the following.

In his post Larry Hawes refers to post of Sameer Patel discussing the difference between ECM systems and social software:

ECM enables controlled, repeatable content publication processes, whereas social software empowers rapid, collaborative creation and sharing of content. There is a place for both in large enterprises. Sameer’s suggestion was that social software be used for authoring, sharing, and collecting feedback on draft documents or content chunks before they are formally published and widely distributed. ECM systems may then be used to publish the final, vetted content and manage it throughout the content lifecycle.

This relates to my understanding why enterprises need such thing as social software - because they need to change and to innovate in order to be more competitive in their markets. Consequently they have to discover new opportunities, ideas and information that is describing or representing these. And as a result from the organizational perspective companies need some kind of “reframing” of their business model.

Inspired by the post of Larry Hawes I would therefore describe the difference between established enterprise business applications and Enterprise 2.0 on a dimension of how the application is supporting the “reframing” process (I am explicitly not talking about “change” or “transformation” here because IMHO “change” is a consciousness thing needed to be done before and “transformation” might go far beyond the needed “reframing” in order to be up-to-date to customer and market expectations).

On this dimension established enterprise business application are “securing the precedent”. They support the planning-and-control-organization of the current operations by registering and certifiably documentating business incidents. The applications provide insights towards the historical status-quo of the business operations and can be distinguished by the business entity it is focussing on. On the one side there are established and defined processes and on the other side business-relevant data and unstructured information that have to be managed throughout their lifecycle.

If we take the scenario of Larry Hawes regarding the customer service issue there are business incidents - commonly in the sphere of knowledge working - that exceed these pre-defined processes and information structures. For these incidents the staff needs to move beyond the status-quo of defined processes and stored information. Former approaches to this used special methodologies like delphi studies and artificial intelligence toforcast the future in order to discovery new opportunities. At this point - social software offers a new approach - as it provides a way of harnessing the collective power of a interconnected setting of people to discover and ventilate new ideas - by externalizing and opening up data about information chunks, knowledge and process execution towards the crowd.

In regards towards this dimension of “reframe” I hence distinguish two further steps: first the “discovery” and second the “exchange”. This takes account of the idea of the learning organization that focuses on enhancing its systems to continually increase the organization’s capacity for performance. It also supports a phrase I first came along in a presentation of Lee Bryant: “It’s all about managing feeds & flows, and not objects“.

Along with the differenciation of business processes and business information, it helps again to keep apart four different use case scenarios of Enterprise 2.0:

1. Unveiling & associating information & knowledge (Knowledge Management 2.0):
   This is about working collaboratively on a state of externalized business knowledge e.g. project/process documentation, service issue/process documentation or sales-orientated product & market documentation. Giving access and authoring as well as sharing possibilities to the crowd creates the chance of someone adding not expected, but very valuable information towards the knowledge base and therefore enhancing it.
2. Support conversation & communications flow (Internal Communications 2.0):
   This is about the exchange and open discussion of new opportunities, ideas or gained knowledge throughout conversational systems as weblogs or microblogging infrastructures. This supports the distribution and ventilation of new ideas throughout the company - eventually reaching out to people that can give valuable feedback to ideas.
3. Supporting & enhancing ad-hoc collaboration (Collaboration 2.0):
   This is about supporting ad-hoc initiated team working to solve issues and problems that go beyond the pre-defined scope of problems or issues. As this would have been solved in offline circles of expertise so far Enterprise 2.0 approaches allow this to be solved on in a digital Enterprise-wide manner.
4. Supporting the learning organization and providing a market of ideas (Innovation Management 2.0):
   This is about interconnecting business entities with people and information about their tasks, interests and competences. Community-of-practices are a common tool for this approach though in times of social software this would rather implemented by an internal social network that is giving even a broader access to people and the relevant information flows within the enterprise.

Just to be clear the above mentioned use cases are not directly linked to technological solutions but certain social software concepts fit better to the one or the other use case. Therefore wiki solutions provide a good approach towards the collaborative knowledge work. While weblogs and microblogging solutions are better in giving access to the flow of information. And social networks provide advantages for supporting collaboration and the learning organization.

At the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT we will discuss different best practices for these four use cases and I will sum up my insights regarding the fit of this matrix towards the practical use out there in a post after the conference. But before this I would be very interested in your thoughts on this!

While we are still far away from the maturity stage of Enterprise 2.0 in terms of numbers of realized projects, the discussion about the Enterprise 2.0 topic becomes more matured and leads finally beyond talking about the chances and opportunities. This might be a sign of the on-going economic crisis and its urge for a more specific discussion about this topic (see the call for the Reality Check 2.0), but it might also be a result of the emergence of the now gained insights from the first best-practices in this field. The exchange of experiences is a very supportive means for this - as enforced by initiatives like the 2.0 Adoption Council , E20Cases.org and others.

This said - I think it’s time to consolidate the topics to be discussed in regards to improve and enhance Enterprise 2.0 projects. From my research for setting up the conference program of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT - I identified 5 key topics for project leads to take care of:

1) There is only one goal to be achieved: collaborative performance.

Yes - we can talk about changing the our world but at the end of the day we live from what we have achieved on a set of goals.

Keeping this in mind it is the results orientation that is driving a project to success. While the measurement of the return of Enterprise 2.0 activities is more complex than with ordinary business processes it is not unfeasible. 2.0 systems are depending on group dynamics that are not always measurable at first sight (as for example in the case of indirect network effects). Therefore we need new approaches to measure the effects. But in the end it’s all about "performing" as stated in Bruce Tuckman four-stage model called Tuckman’s Stages . In conclusion of this is that the development of a collaborative performance measurement is firstly the key to the argumentation for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives as well as the "steering" wheel for the success of the project.

2) Keep the interaction alive and kicking with participation & community management

As already said the 2.0 world is depending on group dynamics realized by social software systems that increase transparency on what other group members are doing and ease the way of participation. So changes and transformation is indirectly caused by interactions within the group. The facilitation and guidance of the group’s interaction process is one of the keys to Enterprise 2.0 effects. It is and will never be guaranteed just by the installation and implementation of technology. The management of this facilitation and guidance is a strategic task of the project and therefore highly important as discussed in Dion’s post on "Community Management: The ‘essential’ capability of successful Enterprise 2.0 efforts" . The conception of the participation & community management is the operational structure for this kind of projects.

3) Set the right environment variables to new forms of organizational schemes and leadership models.

As we are talking about a new way of operational structure within Enterprise 2.0 activities we also have to have a look at the organizational structure. While the traditional organizational structure is based on the concepts of bureaucracy best-practices of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives show that they are better off if they are structured by the ideas of adhocracy . This implies new forms of organizational schemes and models of leadership.

As taken from the Wikipedia the concept of adhocracy leads to the following characteristics of the organizational setup that have to be discussed:

• highly organic structure
• little formalization of behavior
• job specialization based on formal training
• a tendency to group the specialists in functional units for housekeeping purposes but to deploy them in small, market-based project teams to do their work
• a reliance on liaison devices to encourage mutual adjustment, the key coordinating mechanism, within and between these teams
• low standardization of procedures, because they stifle innovation
• roles not clearly defined
• selective decentralization
• work organization rests on specialized teams
• power-shifts to specialized teams
• horizontal job specialization
• culture based on democratic and non-bureaucratic work

4) Be aware of the complexity of changing the game

As derived from the first three topics the implementation and adoption of Enterprise 2.0 concepts within the organization implies a cultural change process at some level (dependent of the scope of the project!). Therefore the management or (as some may say no to a cultural change management) better the facilitation of the process of a cultural change is another key to the success of these projects.

I would like to cite Stuart French at this point :

The key here is that while culture is not a “thing” to be managed, it is certainly undergoing constant transformation. As mentioned earlier, the real power of a cognitive view of culture comes from a change of perspective. If we can learn to see that cultural issues are complex and highly contextual and that intra- and cross-cultural interactions are actually collaborative, mutual learning experiences (Holden, 2002, p.54), then managing both the opportunities and pitfalls simply becomes an issue of knowledge management, specifically networking, knowledge sharing and collaborative (or organisational) learning (Holden, 2002, p.52).

So therefore adoption is a reciprocal process of a) the guidance and governance of the interaction from an organizational perspective while letting people the freedom to take up the group action from a personal perspective and b) the feedback of the outcome of a).

Matthew Hudgson has put together a great diagram of the "Meta theory of social computing tools adoption within Enterprise 2.0".

5) Discuss the scope of Enterprise 2.0 beyond blogs & wikis

While the scope of the discussions around Enterprise 2.0 is mainly focussed on facilitating the generic collaborative processes within the enterprise we have to look beyond this to get the big picture.

Susan Scrupski has drafted a first scene of what has to be viewed in a conjoint way:

These are my takes from my research. As a conclusion I would say it is still a long way to go before we can clearly write down a handbook on Enterprise 2.0. But the discussions are getting more focussed on theses key topics and with the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT on Nov 11 & 12 we are trying to support this as we have chosen these topics to be the underlying themes of the sessions within our Expert Talks Track .

But tell me what are you thinking about this?

PS for those that may be interested in coming to the E2.0 SUMMIT: Get your ticket now and register with a 200 EUR discount on the full conference pass until Oct 11 with the promotional code "e2open200". http://www.e20summit.com/registration.html

UPDATE: Updated Susan’s diagram with the final version!

Crossposted from my posterous-Blog

A nice updated slideshow of Adidas’ Christian Kuhna on their implementation approaches and lessons learned. Found via George Dearing who cheekily talks about “intranet rejuvenation” - that is indeed one reasonable thing to expect when stepping into Enterprise 2.0 - refactor some of the existing stuff (see DMS Review: E2.0 braucht ECM), while not leaving the fast lane (quick experimentation and learning, small pieces loosely joined rather than a biggy project, fast speedboats beating slow moving-and-turning ships et al.)

GULP, a german platform bringing together IT projects and freelancers, took a survey on the latest tech trends according to Gartner.

You can view the results over at their blog in German, IT project managers (dark blue) and freelancers (light blue) were asked to qualify each trend as a bubble or serious technology. The answer “bubble“ is always above, serious technology below.

You see a clear positive statement towards Desktop virtualizing, Unified Communications and Business Intelligence. Mashups and Enterprise 2.0 are seen as bubble.
So the result matches the well known attitude in conservative IT departments.

Convincing the IT is still an issue and more Enterprise 2.0 examples with a clear ROI are welcome.

This week, several german journalists released the Internet Manifesto, seventeen Statements on modern journalism.

The Manifesto is well known on the german blogosphere, but I can’t tell if it made it’s way out to the international audience.
So I’ll go ahead and have a look, if those declarations go along with Enterprise 2.0.

1. The Internet is different.

It produces different public spheres, different terms of trade and different cultural skills. The media must adapt their work methods to today’s technological reality instead of ignoring or challenging it. It is their duty to develop the best possible form of journalism based on the available technology. This includes new journalistic products and methods.

This affects the communication with customers as well as the collaboration of employees, but it’s one of the fundamentals of E2.0.

2. The Internet is a pocket-sized media empire.

The web rearranges existing media structures by transcending their former boundaries and oligopolies. The publication and dissemination of media contents are no longer tied to heavy investments. Journalism’s self-conception is—fortunately—being cured of its gatekeeping function. All that remains is the journalistic quality through which journalism distinguishes itself from mere publication.

I wouldn’t speak of an empire within a company, but several gatekeepers will vanish.

3. The Internet is our society is the Internet.

Web-based platforms like social networks, Wikipedia or YouTube have become a part of everyday life for the majority of people in the western world. They are as accessible as the telephone or television. If media companies want to continue to exist, they must understand the lifeworld of today’s users and embrace their forms of communication. This includes basic forms of social communication: listening and responding, also known as dialog.

Any consultant would like to see E2.0 a part of everyday work, but in most environments we’re far away from that.

4. The freedom of the Internet is inviolable.

The Internet’s open architecture constitutes the basic IT law of a society which communicates digitally and, consequently, of journalism. It may not be modified for the sake of protecting the special commercial or political interests often hidden behind the pretense of public interest. Regardless of how it is done, blocking access to the Internet endangers the free flow of information and corrupts our fundamental right to a self-determined level of information.

Ask your local IT on that point. But as soon as you get out to your customers or partners, keep it in mind.

5. The Internet is the victory of information.

Due to inadequate technology, media companies, research centers, public institutions and other organizations compiled and classified the world’s information up to now. Today every citizen can set up her own personal news filter while search engines tap into wealths of information of a magnitude never before known. Individuals can now inform themselves better than ever.

Yes, free the information within your company. But to be honest, there’ll always be some figures you don’t want to expose to all.

6. The Internet changes improves journalism.

Through the Internet, journalism can fulfill its social-educational role in a new way. This includes presenting information as an ever-changing, continual process; the forfeiture of print media’s inalterability is a benefit. Those who want to survive in this new world of information need a new idealism, new journalistic ideas and a sense of pleasure in exploiting this new potential.

Although I wouldn’t name it journalism, Enterprise 2.0 might change the way you deal with agendas, protocols and reports. And as far as I have seen, in a very positive way.

7. The net requires networking.

Links are connections. We know each other through links. Those who do not use them exclude themselves from social discourse. This also holds for the websites of traditional media companies.

Collaboration requires networking. So great we have the net.

8. Links reward, citations adorn.

Search engines and aggregators facilitate quality journalism: they boost the findability of outstanding content over a long-term basis and are thus an integral part of the new, networked public sphere. References through links and citations—especially including those made without any consent or even remuneration of the originator—make the very culture of networked social discourse possible in the first place. They are by all means worthy of protection.

And they build up your professional reputation.

9. The Internet is the new venue for political discourse.

Democracy thrives on participation and freedom of information. Transferring the political discussion from traditional media to the Internet and expanding on this discussion by involving the active participation of the public is one of journalism’s new tasks.

That one misses out. At least in Germany, a political discourse isn’t something you want in your company.

10. Today’s freedom of the press means freedom of opinion.

Article 5 of the German Constitution does not comprise protective rights for professions or technically traditional business models. The Internet overrides the technological boundaries between the amateur and professional. This is why the privilege of freedom of the press must hold for anyone who can contribute to the fulfillment of journalistic duties. Qualitatively speaking, no differentiation should be made between paid and unpaid journalism, but rather, between good and poor journalism.

At least the customer service will open up, but imho press releases will stay for a long time.

11. More is more – there is no such thing as too much information.

Once upon a time, institutions such as the church prioritized power over personal awareness and warned of an unsifted flood of information when the letterpress was invented. On the other hand were the pamphleteers, encyclopaedists and journalists who proved that more information leads to more freedom, both for the individual as well as society as a whole. To this day, nothing has changed in this respect.

You’ll need intelligent filters, but every bit of information is worth something.

12. Tradition is not a business model.

Money can be made on the Internet with journalistic content. There are many examples of this today already. Yet because the Internet is fiercely competitive, business models have to be adapted to the structure of the net. No one should try to abscond from this essential adaptation through policy-making geared to preserving the status quo. Journalism needs open competition for the best refinancing solutions on the net, along with the courage to invest in the multifaceted implementation of these solutions.

I think, this depends on your environment. Even in Social Media you can keep traditions up, if your culture is ok with it.

13. Copyright becomes a civic duty on the Internet.

Copyright is a cornerstone of information organization on the Internet. Originators’ rights to decide on the type and scope of dissemination of their contents are also valid on the net. At the same time, copyright may not be abused as a lever to safeguard obsolete supply mechanisms and shut out new distribution models or license schemes. Ownership entails obligations.

This is a tricky one, I’ll pass out.

14. The Internet has many currencies.

Journalistic online services financed through adverts offer content in exchange for a pull effect. A reader’s, viewer’s or listener’s time is valuable. In the industry of journalism, this correlation has always been one of the fundamental tenets of financing. Other forms of refinancing which are journalistically justifiable need to be forged and tested.

The Internet is lifting journalism to a new qualitative level. Online, text, sound and images no longer have to be transient. They remain retrievable, thus building an archive of contemporary history. Journalism must take the development of information, its interpretation and errors into account, i.e., it must admit its mistakes and correct them in a transparent manner.

As Sebastian Schäfer completed my comparison of different Social Software Categorizations with an interesting model by Andrew McAfee, I’d like to share a crash course on Enterprise 2.0.
The video is already around for a few weeks, but Mattias Schwenk reposted it today. It contains the concept of the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye, a look on social software tools strictly through the ties between people.

I just didn’t get to embed the video, so please go and see it on youtube in HD-glory and have a nice weekend.

Update

YouTube Direkt

When it comes to Social Software in the Enterprise the full suite solutions are on their way. See the last Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software for details and vendors.
As the pure products vanish and build up on functionality, it might be worth a look to some general categorizations of social software. So we won’t have to talk about “kind of a blog with wiki functionality” or something similar.
Gartner uses the dimensions “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision” in the Magic Quadrant which are great for vendors or products, but not for functionality in general.

A common approach in germany builds upon a classification system for CSCW-Systems. (Teufel, 1995)
The first adoption for Social Software by Schmidt focused on the three funtions Informationmanagement, Identitymanagement and Connectionmanagement.

In an improved version by Koch and Richter (Cooperation Systems Center Munich (german), Bundeswehr University Munich) changed the connection part to communication and added the loose connections to the identitymanagement. You might think of all your quiet facebook friends here.

Niall Cook has a totally different Matrix, the 4C’s as in his book Enterprise 2.0 book.

I merged two diagrams to get this one, so some software examples aren’t in here. I’m not confident with this classification as there are some well known apps split up across the matrix, i.e. Tagging and Social Bookmarking. In the original book you’ll find more examples.
Cook mentions cooperation and collaboration, two points which misses out on both triangles.

Another idea is a draft by Joachim Niemeier in a german slideshare presentation.

Personally I like the quadrant best, but I would add some modifications to it. As long as my ideas on this are not fully set, I prefer even more inspiration.

So did I miss out some well known ideas?