…as the gaps between my blog entries get greater and greater.
What I have found in recent months is that my use of social networking tools is increasing. I have a professional interest in all of this stuff, so I'm not a “typical” punter, but nonetheless, I'm noticing a distinct move in my habits.
Facebook provides much of the contact with my social network, although Fantasy Football still provides a valuable function (and I'm not just saying that because I'm about to get promoted). LinkedIn provides increasingly valuable assistance to help me manage my business network, and I've just (at last) joined Twitter to tweet with the best of them. Quite where that falls on the business/pleasure spectrum I'm yet to work out…
What I'm definitely seeing less of (outside of intra-organisational communications) is email. I was at a Lotus event a couple of weeks ago, and the observation was made that Generation Yers (and whatever generation comes after that) are seeing email as an anachronism in the same way as they see vinyl records as something from beyond the Ark. Communication is either Realtime (IM, Skype etc) or in a social network environment (or a bit of both – see Facebook messenger…)
What is going to be interesting is how this will pan out within corporates. Large organisations are able to establish their own corporate social networks – certainly in my time at Reuters, there was effort to establish an internal set of services for sharing information amongst communities within the company. If you've got 20,000+ people in a company, there is a chance that this might show some return. But I'm convinced that there is much greater value to be had through services, like Facebook, that are provided independently of any organisation. My “colleagues” are now spread across my own organisation, my suppliers, partners and clients. Locking out individuals based on who they are paid by doesn't reflect the reality of how many organisations are already virtualised…
mmitII 