Some other Social Media developments applicable to a business setting.

The verdicts: Time to invest in both in web technologies and web people. Read more Here

Jim Balsillie believes that 2009 will be the year of the enterprise adopting social networks.. This is best communicated in the words of Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School who said… (In this presentation)

“We need to keep in mind that most E2.0 tools are new, and that their acceptance depends on shifts in perspective on the part of business leaders and decision makers, shifts for which the word ‘seismic’ might not be an overstatement. Enterprise 2.0 tools have no inherent respect for organizational boundaries, hierarchies, or job titles. They facilitate self-organization and emergent rather than imposed structure. They require line managers, compliance officers, and other stewards to trust that users will not deliberately or inadvertently use them inappropriately. They require these stewards to become comfortable with collaboration environments that “practice the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them” as Jimmy Wales has said. They require, in short, the re-examination and often the reversal of many longstanding assumptions and practices. It is not in the least disrespectful or contemptuous of today’s managers to say that it will take them some time to get used to this.”

A Forrester survey recently showed that larger enterprises are “almost twice as likely to pilot or deploy Web 2.0 technologies in 2008 compared to the small and medium flavors.” Which makes sense, but adoption will be impossible to avoid, and why not when in a marketing sense is free monetary investment wise, although time and attention investment is key.

I found this interesting, a description of an emerging role titled “Community Manager”, the role involves managing a firms social networks.

As a Community Manager, my main task is to make sure people are happy—this includes my client as well as my community members. Each day we’re actively in our communities, reading posts, replying to messages, and noticing trends.

“Among the most important aspect of this role is doing just that—noticing trends or patterns. That’s how we make this work. By listening to what customers have to say and streamlining this information into a series of more digestible community “sound bites” we’re able to bridge the gap between what the customer wants and is talking about, and, what the client wants and is also talking about.” Read more here