2008 eROI Online Marketing Prediction #2: Collaboration Software
Jan 06 2008
Social networking sites will turn into collaborative software platforms (think online Calendar, spreadsheets, word processing, web conference, presentation collaboration, image manipulation between many parties, and the already-standard email, chat, IM, blog, profile pages). Social networking isn’t just for kids anymore. Over 60% of new Facebook users are over 30 years old now. These 30, 40, 50, and a few 60somethings are professionals who will leverage these online communities to help with more than just business development.
If Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social community sites add professional collaboration tools like personalized calendars, spreadsheets, whiteboards into the mix, business people and businesses as a whole will standardize their entire internal communication operations (document sharing, chat, IM, blog, email threaded discussions) on these collaboration communities for increased productivity, mobility and trackability. A leader in the new frontier of Web 2.0.0.8 Collaboration Software is Portland’s own Jive Software and their blazing hot new product called Clearspace.
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January 9th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Ryan, great points with prediction #2. One important aspect of integrating all these communication tools (email, IM, blogs, wiki documents, discussions/forums) is to leverage the strengths of each medium: private (silo-ed) vs. open data, one-way broadcasts vs. two-way conversations, threaded discussions vs. evolving documents, etc. Each channel offers a unique way of engaging the intended audience for collaboration, some more effectively than others. Having each channel available in your communication arsenal lets you use the channel that best fits your goals, as opposed to being boxed in to one medium (e.g. trying to use email for document collaboration). As users learn the different values of each medium, both individuals and the social network in which they are collaborating (in this case, the enterprise) will realize a higher value and greater level of productivity.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Thanks for the shout-out, Ryan. I know a lot of the leaders from the social networking companies and moving into professional / enterprise collaboration is pretty far away from their current plans. It will take everything they have to stay competitive with consumers who have the ability to switch in a matter of minutes.
That said, the data they have is very important and useful, thus the initiatives like dataportability. Companies will want their systems to be able to read and interpret the data from LinkedIn, FB, etc. Also, the models they are using help lay the framework for the future of business collaboration.
Great stuff. Keep it up.
Dave Hersh
CEO, Jive Software