However, it incresingly clear that Twitter will one day soon overtake Facebook as the social networking champion for a number of obvious reasons...

1- Connections - Its much easier to add connections (followers) on Twitter. With a click you can see 30 or more followers of any one person and by reading a Tweet or two, determine whether you want to follow them (and often, by custom, they will automatically follow you... opening up exponential connecting opportunities amongst respective followers). Additionally, Tweeps don't have to ask for permission to follow someone, its automatic with no approval process. Typically, Facebook friends know each other in real life... this is not the case on Twitter.

2- Security – Twitter doesn't breed the same security and privacy concerns that are associated with Facebook and the Facebook platform. Tweeps only post one photo, often an icon, or representative image rather than themselves, and a very short bio with a link. Facebook openly encourages you to share as much about yourself as possible and encourages the use of applications that want to grab as much personal information about you as possible.

3- Interface – The Twitter user interface could hardly be easier to use: quick hit posts or micro or mini blogs, a quick glance at other Tweets, and you're out. Facebook is increasingly heavy and cluttered: a myriad of applications, information feeds, photos, ads, etc.... one is left wondering where to look. I have no clue where my “Wall” is anymore, and I now find it stressful to look at Facebook as there's simply too much to digest, and I can no longer do it at a glance.

4- Big brother – Facebook's ownership and management has made conspicuous effort to get tough with its members in recent months. Rather than listen, read or watch what users want, Facebook had decided to do what it wants, in spite of its users. Recently there was the infamous new Terms of Service that implicitly said, “Screw you guys, we'll do what we want with YOUR content.” Follow that up with recent changes to the interface despite massive outcries and user complaints, and Facebook has taken on a reputation of being a bullying 'big brother'... and some members have started deleting their accounts.

5- Applications – There are thousands of Facebook applications, but so many of them serve little or no value, are frequently invasive, if not down right abusive. I have no interest in chomping vampires, finding out “what kind of sandle” I am (are you frickin' kidding me?!), or surrendering my soul for a cheap IQ test, let alone selling all of my personal information for free. Twitter applications are fewer and far-between, but can be tremendously helpful. Tweetdeck is a god-send to Twitter, its founders, and users – it has quadrupled the Twitter experience for highly active Tweeps (ask anyone who uses it). Those that operate multiple Twitter accounts swear by the Twhirl application; and the Tweetpic is now taking Twittersville by storm.

There's another key differentiator: people "join" Facebook, but they "use" Twitter. That's not to say that people don't "use" Facebook, but most are passive members that check the site when they get a note or a friend invite, or once-in-a-while to see what people are doing. Twitter's community however is extraordinarily active -- the average Tweep is on the site several times per day (or using an application that connects to the site). So while Facebook will continue to have a larger membership, Twitter will grow at a faster rate, but will be far more heavily used. Additionally, the mobile use of Tweeps who Tweet from their PDA will begin to skyrocket and far eclipse anything Facebook has ever seen from mobile users.

Facebook is great social networking, but Twitter is more viral, and better used -- it will overtake Facebook someday soon....

--

Toby Ward is an Internet & intranet consultant, writer and speaker, and the Founder of Prescient Digital Media. Feel free to look him up on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @tobyward.

Need help working with or implementing social media? See Prescient Digital Media's Web 2.0 Blueprint.

Technorati Profile

“One common element from all of the discussions is the frustration nearly all of these organization have with their experience with Microsoft SharePoint 2007,” says Thomas Vander Wal, Principal of InfoCloud Solutions, Inc. “The comments are based on those spending one month to a year with the tool (the six month to one year club with tools offer best insight).”

“SharePoint does some things rather well, but it is not a great tool (or even passable tool) for broad social interaction inside enterprise related to the focus of Enterprise 2.0,” adds Thomas. “SharePoint works well for organization prescribed groups that live in hierarchies and are focussed on strict processes and defined sign-offs.”

Technorati Profile

Prescient's Catherine Elder highlights some of the common audience challenges on a website or intranet:

1. Senior staff want something to go on the home page, and then something else and something else and so on

2. Users complain that they can’t find information or that it is buried deep within the bowels of the site and it takes forever to find it or is impossible to remember where it is

Both these problems are being experienced not only on intranets but also on external websites.

Read all of Catherine Elder's article on Developing personas

Google Maps is an example – it draws all the listings and information from many different sources without having to use an expensive piece of portal technology. These are quite simple to do, and for some represent most of the desired content for integration into a single view or portal.

Even though most don't use or understand mashups (sometimes spelt with the hyphen 'mash-up') , this nascent technology is about to break-out on a corporate intranet near you:

• mashups will be a $682 million industry in the next 5 years (Forrester)

• 64% of companies are already adopting mashups or plan to within the next two years (Economist Intelligence Unit)

• Web mashups, which mix content from publicly available sources, will be the dominant model (80%) for the creation of new enterprise application by 2010 (Gartner, which also cites mashup technology as a top 10 'disrupting' technology over the next 4 years)

• RSS (the dominant technology delivering data to mashups) has been adopted by 37% of organizations; an additional 53% of organizations plan to or are considering their options for adopting RSS (Intranet 2.0 Global Study)

“Mashup technologies can and will disrupt enterprise applications,” says Renat Khasanshyn, author of the Naked Open Source blog and CEO, Altoros Systems, LLC. “During the next three years, mashups will open up a new enterprise application market, providing business users and IT departments with a quick and inexpensive approach to develop and implement applications. And during the decade following 2010, maturing mashup building technologies will shrink the enterprise application market.”

In other words, the mashup provides a light-weight alternative to portals and personalization features (see Alternatives to intranet personalization).

On the corporate intranet, a mashup would typically combine information and data from two to six different sources and might include:

• a news feed

• sales figures

• a widget that displays the most recent comments posted to the CEO blog

• inventory levels delivered from a back-end database

• a map pinpointing active client projects

InformIT, republishing an original article in SOA magazine, offer six major characteristics to an enterprise or intranet mashup (see Enterprise Mashups Part I):

• Collaborative - Mashups are designed to be tagged/searchable/shared with others. User tagging, often called a 'folksonomy', helps users put meaning for themselves and others.

• Have a face - Mashups usually have a face and the face is a widget. Just like mashups are "micro", so are the applications that front-end them. If the user is the recipient of the mashup, it's only natural for the user to be given a way to interact with the data.

• Focused on the 'pack' - Mashups are typically created, used, and shared among a small number of related individuals. Knowledge workers collaborate in small packs. Although they may be part of a larger group, they usually function as small teams when it comes to discrete information needs.

• Time-sensitive - Users need data now. Mashups usually have near real-time delivery requirements. They don't have time to wait for IT to "pre-integrate" data so they can get at it. The Web is real-time and business users have evolved to expect the same inside their enterprises.

• Non-invasive - There's no need to bring in a whole new set of infrastructure, as enterprise mashups run inside the current enterprise stack. This includes both mashup sources (databases, SOA services, etc.) and mashup destinations (portals, blogs, wikis, email, spreadsheets, etc.).

• Limited cleansing - The amount of data cleansing and normalization needed should be comparable to the amount of cleansing and normalization a user does in Excel. If there's more, you have a bigger problem that should be addressed concurrently with your mashup initiative.

Have you considered intranet mashups? Are you using a portal for intranet home page customization / personalization? Have you considered RSS? Continue the discussion on the Intranet Global Forum (Facebook community).

Wondering how to use mashups and other 2.0 technology on the corporate intranet? Have a look at the Intranet 2.0 Blueprint.

Technorati Profile

If you're in North America and didn't make the IntraTeam Event in Denmark earlier this month, the next great intranet conference is coming-up next month: The Intranet Insider World Tour Live, New York City, NY, April 16 – 17.

Here are some of the intranets being showcased at this year's conference:

• Sprint Nextel

• Con Edison

• IKEA

• Siemens

• IBM

• Delloite

• Thomson Reuters

• And more!

I'll be co-chairing this 2-day conference in NYC (April 16 - 17) that showcases some of the best intranets going. This intimate and interactive conference event builds on the webinar and brings together the experts and practitioners from leading intranets.

This conference is taking into account the global financial crisis and is AMAZINGLY INEXPENSIVE (only $900 for 2-full days!).

Don't miss the best buy of the year and Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour LIVE.

Social media on the corporate intranet (Intranet 2.0) presents a unique opportunity for all employees at all levels and geographies to better connect, and share information and knowledge they might not otherwise share or learn. In fact, distance – both geographical and intellectual – between these connections is often significant with little if any filtering from one side to the next; an information gap that is not easily bridged in larger, dispersed organizations. For example, the Towers Perrion study also found that:

• 43% of employees do not feel they know enough about their own customers

• 65% of employees do not feel they know enough about the competition to be fully effective

• Only 39% of employees feel they are informed about the differences between their company’s products and the competition

Keep reading... Building Employee Engagement With Internal Social Networks

Here are some stats:

• 55% of organizations have implemented or are considering implementing SharePoint (Global Intranet Trends 2009 report - 227 participant organizations)

• 46% of those companies using social media on the intranet are using SharePoint(Intranet 2.0 Global Survey – 430+ participant organizations)

• Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (Intranet 2.0 Global Survey)

• 70% use at the department level; only 38% use it at the enterprise level (AIIM)

Many communications professionals have asked, “Is SharePoint good for my company intranet?”

SharePoint for Communicators is a webinar answers the question with advice on how to proceed.

In this five-week online workshop, we’ll examine MOSS as a technology platform, and as a communications platform for managing content including news and social media. MOSS is not known as a strong solution for a large-size enterprise intranet. But it is good starting platform in a Microsoft environment, and is very good for team and group collaboration. This workshop will consider all of the pros and cons of MOSS, with expert opinion and advice for non-techie business users and communicators. Included in this Webinar will be:

1. Introduction to MOSS—An overview of the technology in non-techie language.

2. Pros and cons of MOSS for communicators—The good, bad and the things Microsoft won’t always tell you.

3. MOSS for content management—The elements and functionality of the content management system and how it compares to other systems.

4. Planning & Governance—MOSS can in fact create more problems without the necessary planning and governance. We’ll tell you what you need to prepare.

5. Plug-ins and alternatives to MOSS—MOSS is a very complex platform, but there are many additional modules and plug-ins that can enhance it greatly… We’ll also compare MOSS to other alternative solutions.

Webinars are asynchronous-you participate when it’s convenient for you. A new text-based lecture is posted each Monday morning, but you can take advantage of it whenever you have the time. Be sure to watch the video demo of the webinar format to determine if it’s right for your professional development needs.

Register for SharePoint for Communicators webinar

Technorati Profile

A strategy has definition, is well documented and shared by all stakeholders, and has key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics. The strategy provides direction for executable actions (in the context of this article, we will treat strategy as synonymous with plan, though a strategy in the broader definition might contain many plans). For an intranet, a typical strategy would include the following elements:

• Vision

• Mission

• Target audience defintion / segmentation

• Governance

• Goals

• Objectives

• Action plans

• KPIs (or CSIs)

Strategy is independent of technology... read my full column Intranet strategy: planning a successful intranet.

ALSO READ:

Intranet planning