These are just some of the issues to be addressed in tomorrow's Putting Social Media to work in your Intranet Strategy (February 26th, 2009, 12PM EST – it's free to attend but you need to reserve your spot now).

The real value of social media on the intranet are the relationships and connections that are built and enhanced for unlocking tacit knowledge and unleashing creativity and future potential. Consider the research findings of MIT¹:

• 40% of creative teams productivity is directly explained by the amount of communication they have with others to discover, gather, and internalise information.

• Employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues.

And yet while most social media represent simple technology (and some like discussion forums and instant messaging have been around for more than 10 years), it is new enough that most employees have little experience using it (particularly older generations) or struggle with understanding the value it represents to the business. This cultural shift or barrier is also explicit in the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (430+ organizations worldwide) where most organizations have implemented or are planning to implement social media, but few really know or understand how to make it work (or are able to convince senior management or employees of the value):

• 41% have implemented blogs, but only 11% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have blogs, only 11% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

• 46% have implemented wikis, but only 15% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have wikis, only 10% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

• 47% have implemented discussion forums, but only 20% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have discussion forums, only 9% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

Amongst the biggest barriers to implementing social media on the intranet:

• Lack of executive support (33%)

• Lack of a business case (31%)

• IT supprt (31%)

• Addressing internal policy concerns (29%)

If your executives don't understand or see the value in social media, older generation employees certainly won't flock to adopt. However, the pressure to adopt and innovate comes from the younger generation, particularly those under 40. Here in Canada, more than 90% of those under 40-years-old are on Facebook. You can imagine how eager those same employees might be to use “employee networking” and other social media tools on the corporate intranet if they were educated as to how it works, and why it's of value to them.

Leading me to the potential cost of failing to adopt social media into your intranet strategy: 39% of 18 to 24 year-old employees would consider leaving their employer if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube; a further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban (Telindus study of 1,000 European employees).

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ATTEND THE WEBINAR: Putting Social Media to work in your Intranet Strategy (February 26th, 2009, 12PM EST – it's free to attend but you need to reserve your spot now).

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: www.Twitter.com/TobyWard

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1. Executives don't seem to care much for me but the communications, HR and IT people fight over me!

2. Communications sort of owns me, but HR kind of does too... and IT owns part of it, but I'm not sure what part.

3. Our CEO uses me all the time; last month he had his assistant look-up a phone number.

4. I have many neglected sisters that I've never met, but we all look and act different (I'm the cute one though). (tip to Julian Mills)
   

5. My home page design is really, really cool.... if it was 1994.

6. I'm so old and out-dated that I'm retro cool. Hush Puppies have nothing on me.

7. Microsoft doesn't run me yet... but they will! (They already pimp my sisters).

8. I kinda have content management; it's called Dreamweaver.

9. Governance? No, we're Canadian, we have premiers.

10. Personalized portal? We don't have time for that...

11. Intranet blogs? Absolutely not; legal considers them more dangerous than terrorists..

12. Wiki? A what now?!

13. My peeps always complain that they “can't find anything!” on me; and yet they refuse meta tags...

14. Information architecture is for suckers

15. Our employees don't visit our vision and values page, but they flock to the caffeteria menus (meatloaf is surprisingly popular.... “MA! THE MEATLOAF! What is she doing back there?!)

16. Why hire an outside expert to help when we can close our eyes and 'hope' it gets better...? (The summer student intern program will be our 'tippint point').

17. Employees use Facebook more than they use me.

18. We just banned Facebook.

19. The budget we spend on art for hallways is 10x my budget. What's the ROI on paintings, huh?!

20. The budget we spend on coffee swizzle sticks is 2x my budget. ROI not required.

21. I have a budget?!?!

22. What's my name again?

23. Homeland security doesn't consider me a threat (yet).

24. I don't have any video, intranet 2.0, or anything innovative... but not to worry, I hear the Telex is going to make a stunning comeback.

25. The search engine doesn't suck! You suck!

The above opinions expressed by said intranet in no way reflect the opinions, secret thoughts or previously blogged or tweeted advice of the author, the Microsoft Corporation, or the writers of Wedding Crashers. Any resemblance to real persons, intranets, or meatloaf living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. Batteries not included.

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FREE WEBINAR: Reserve your spot Putting Social Media to work in your Intranet Strategy (February 26th, 2009, 12PM EST). Reserve your spot today.

The Beta Test is a trial run of any new site before it goes live to the target audience. “This is the perfect opportunity to make sure everything is working the way it was planned to work,” writes Cathy Mcknight, senior intranet consultant with Prescient Digital Media in her article To Beta or Not to Beta?...

Step 1: User needs assessed and validated. Check.

Step 2: Built site strategy and supporting structure. Check.

Step 3: Determine site functional needs. Check and double check.

Step 4: Selected the right technology solution. Check.

Step 5: Implement technology and build site. Check.

Step 6: Go live to audience.

Stop right there! Hold the presses and put the champagne back on ice, you missed Step 5.5: Beta test.

Read To Beta or Not to Beta? for Cathy's checklist of recommendations and considertations for beta testing your intranet or site before it goes live into production.

ALSO:

<---- Listen to my Utterz (micropodcast): Update: Intranet 2.0 Global Survey findings click the play button on the blue Utterz widget in the left column or the link to listen).

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SOME OF THE INTRANET 2.0 GLOBAL SURVEY FINDINGS:

SharePoint governance & intranet ownership (MOSS 2007)

Intranet RSS on the rise, but...

Intranet 2.0: Transformative powers & barriers

Most, when hearing of Twitter for the first time, merely shake their heads with a response that includes phrases like “I don't get it,” “that's stupid,”and “I don't have the time” (my personal favorite is, “It sounds too much like diddler”). And yet, few would deny the power of Facebook now, the fourth most trafficked website on the Internet, but many used the same words and phrases in response to Facebook when they first heard of it one or two years ago.

Janssen-Cilag's Twitter-like microblogging tool on the corporate intranet

(source: Nathan Wallace, Associate Director - Information Technology (Jitter: Experimenting with microblogging in the enterprise)

Here are some facts about Twitter:

• 2.7 million U.S. visitors in December (U.S. only) a nearly eight-fold rise in one year (Nielsen)

• 666,000 U.S. users accessed Twitter on mobile devices in December (Nielsen)

• One in five (20%) of 18 to 34 year-olds have tried Twitter or a similar service at least once (Pew Internet Life)

• The median age on Twitter is 31, older than Facebook's 26 and MySpace's 27 (Pew)

• Approximately 5-10 million registered users (best guess depending on the guesser; Facebook has 150 million users, and LinkedIn 34 million) (PC World)
  

For Interent users, the evolution of Twitter is best described by MinXuan Lee (@minxuan) in the 5 stages of Twitter Acceptance (How Twitter Changed My Life):

1. Denial: “I think Twitter sounds stupid. Why would anyone care what other people are doing right now?”

2. Presence: “OK, I don't really get why people love it, but I guess I should at least create an account.”

3. Dumping: “I'm on Twitter and use it for pasting links to my blog posts and pointing people to my press releases.”

4. Conversing: “I don't always post useful stuff, but I do use Twitter to have authentic 1x1 conversations.”

5. Microblogging: “I'm using Twitter to publish useful information that people read and converse 1x1 authentically.”

Twitter is changing the face of social media, which in-turn has reinvented the Internet. The story of U.S. Airways flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River was broken on Twitter, more than 10 minutes before CNN had the story. Ditto the Mumbai bombings which triggered an onslaught of 'tweets' at an estimated rate of 900 per minute during the height of the crisis.

As I write this, Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds, and so to is my list of followers (Barrack Obama just became a follower... must be a bot). To put it in a business context, a Network World survey of 583 IT execs found that 84% said they visit social networking sites on a regular basis, up from 68% last year; 64% use those same sites more than they did one year ago.

As it transforms social media, Twitter is helping to reinvigorate the corporate intranet. At Prescient Digital Media we use a Twitter-like platform called Yammer. It's free to use and myself and other staff are using it to keep abreast of each other's work and activities.

Other companies are rolling out their own microblogging platforms for employees. Janssen-Cilag Australia & New Zealand launched an internal microblogging platform called Jitter. “Combined with our intranet's people search capabilities, this formed an interesting enterprise hybrid of Facebook & Twitter style capabilities,” writes Nathan Wallace, Associate Director - Information Technology for Janssen-Cilag (see Jitter: Experimenting with microblogging in the enterprise ). This new intranet microblogging solution garnered them a Highly Commended in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards.

The future for Twitter is extremely bright: they've turned down one US$500 million offer from Facebook, undoubtedly several other big offers, and are undoubtedly worth well north of $1 billion. Twitter has just raised an additional US$35 million in venture capital and no doubt has some big plans for that cash, but is so far remaining hush and humble about the plans and their success to date.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tobyward  

RELATED READING:

Twitter is Now a Must in the Enterprise

Can all that Twitters turn to gold amid the gloom?

Tweet to compete

US Airways fails web crisis communications

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An update on the Intranet 2.0 Global Study: I will initially present the findings at this year's IntraTeam Event (conference) in Copenhagen. Readers of IntranetBlog.com also get a discount of 15%. Just use price code: "Prescient15" when you reserve on the IntraTeam website. I've since revoked the Tuborg offer -- but I've replaced it with a Carlsberg offer... if you book your seat now!

IN THE MEANTIME:

I'll be sharing little study follow my musings and wild adventures on Twitter (www.twitter.com/tobyward)