“Inspired by Top 10 travel guides, and Amazon’s ListMania, we thought that shared lists could be an interesting content type for an enterprise social networking site,” say Geyer, Dugan, DiMicco, Millen, Brownholtz, and Muller, IBM’s collective brain trust behind IBM’s Beehive social networking site for employees[1].

While Beehive is a social networking site that allows employees to connect, track each others’ activities, share photos, and even schedule events, a key viral ingredient of Beehive’s buzz is the ability to create shared lists – “top 5” lists called “Hive5s”.

“We hypothesized that lists in an enterprise would be used to discuss opinions and share information related to the work context, (e.g. “My favorite RSS readers,” “Best lunch places,” or “Useful web design principles.” Since lists allow users to express preferences and opinions, and put items into an order, we envisioned that they would spark controversy between users and provoke social interaction.”

To create a list a “bee” (user) enters five items related to a given topic (e.g. top 5 products) and can insert a photo or a link to any of the five items, can “tag” each list with keywords, and determine whether or not the list is viewable to any employee, or just to direct connections (friends). Additionally, bees can reuse others lists to create their own list for comparison.

“We decided to explicitly support “reuse” of lists in Beehive, i.e. based on another list, a user can create their own list on the same topic linked back to the original list,” say the Beehive creators[1]. “When we designed the shared lists, we thought that users, when reading a list, might feel compelled to create their own list about the same topic, either because they disagree and want to create a list with different items and ordering, or the topic inspired them to share something similar.”

Once a list is published it can be read by others in several places:

• A collection page of recently created lists on the Beehive home page
• A collection page of all the lists of a selected user within the users own profile
• Within search results of a specific topic or “tag” (keywords).

Each list when viewed reveals:

• The text for 5 items
• Any annotated photos
• Any annotated tags
• A ‘reuse map” (who reused it, when, etc.)
• A list of “the buzz” (user comments)
• A note of how many times that list has been viewed by other bees 

The adoption rate is the impressive statistic. Up until August 2007, Beehive was still in ‘trial’ mode and only had a couple of hundred invited users. In the nine months since, Beehive has exploded:

• Over 35,000 registered IBM employees
• Created over 280,000 social network connections to each other
• Posted more than 150,000 comments
• Shared more than 43,000 photos
• Created over 15,000 "Hive5s” fives"
• Hosted over 2000 events

If the “Hive5s” are the key viral ingredient, the “reuse” list is the secret honey. One user comment in IBM’s own internal study sums up the fantastically viral nature of list reuse: “I found it interesting and wanted to reveal and show myself within the community (a specific Beehive community of IBMers) […] and in a sense I wanted to get into this community, so I entered it reusing somebody’s Hive5 and in a friendly way, in some social gesture, reuse the Hive5 and get into the community.” For this bee, and many others, the Hive5 list reuse was an invitation to a community that he wanted to be part of, despite his geographic location.

One early list called “4 truths and a lie” sparked a lot of reuse, dozens of comments, and bubbled over into real-world and face-to-face conversations. “Several times I did it with my team. Like people writing to me and I’m writing to them, saying did you see […] that thing on Beehive, sending the link,” said one user.

In fact, people who don’t know each other are connecting through Beehive, and those that are reusing lists often don’t know each other. “The interview data (from the internal study) suggests that people need not feel any particular connection to the person whose list they reuse” say the creators[1]. “While we found that reuse in itself is not always a social act, there are some reuse trees that have sparked many conversations and have formed ad hoc interest groups”

Beehive clearly demonstrates that employees want to network socially, and that if the employer creates the hive, employees will create the buzz.

Read more about the Beehive social networking site: Beehive builds buzz at IBM.

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On Wednesday: A look at IBM’s other employee social networking tool: Fringe. If Beehive is akin to Facebook, Fringe is akin to LinkedIn. However, Fringe is more of a people-tagging tool that is significantly different than any of the above, but equally impressive.

Tomorrow’s (Tuesday) Intranet 2.0 webinar: if you’re a client of Prescient (or about to become one), then you have a free invitation to this special clients-only webinar that will showcase the latest and greatest in Intranet 2.0 including IBM’s Beehive and Fringe, BT’s employee social networking, and many other leading examples. If you’re a client or about to become one and don’t have the coordinates for this hour long webinar, then please call me right away to get the details (416.986.2226). The webinar starts at 1pmEDT (10am PDT). If you can’t make the webinar but still want to learn more, perhaps we can reprise the webinar for you and your team at a later date (call me to arrange).