Will they be watching you?

Stephen Baker of Business Week's Blogspotting views the $17 million fundraising by Visible Path as an ominous sign for workplace privacy.

Visible Path (check out the demo) is, as the BusinessWeek article puts it, "MySpace for the Office." It is a social networking tool that business utilize that, "keeps tabs on whom its users communicate with by e-mail or through other means. And it ranks the strengths of those relationships based on how often people communicate. Then it helps users find common sources and contacts so they can approach one another to do business."

It will also provide information on potential contacts from sources such as Google and Hoovers.

Baker may be right that "once corporations have in place a tool to study the e-mail, chat, cell-phone and other communication patterns within their enterprise, they'll use it for a lot more than just honing sales efforts."

However, I think the more likely scenario is that employees will start working outside their organizations network in order to avoid scrutiny. Visible Path is based on the potential power of soft-ties, however these are often the type of relationships that we don't want advertised or shared. Bottom-line: Workers may be willing to leverage relationships for the greater good, but it should be on their own terms, it should not be mandated by the company.

The strength of social networks is that though they make individuals more available and accessible, they are still based on an opt-in principle. From MySpace to Friendster to Facebook, individuals are able to put some level of limitation on who sees what and who they interact with.

Visible path differs from enterprise social bookmarking which allows for knowledge sharing based on personal interests that employees have voluntarily offered. An opt-in system takes advantage of expertise and passion, while forced networking may result in skepticism and distrust.

Much of the discussion about applying social media to the enterprise stems from the perceived power of social capital. It is roughly the same line of thinking that leads everyone to want to be friends with the popular kids in high school. People who know people, people who are trusted - these are the people who can get things done.

Companies may struggle in trying to exploit both the natural communities that form and exist within organizations and those that their employees may be a part of outside of the office. It is

So what is the answer?
In my humble opinion the best approach is to give employees the tools and the choice of how to use them. It is the job of corporate communicators to convince employees that using social media can make their job easier and make them more successful. However, in the end you can't force relationships, just like you can't create authenticity and you can't manufacturer conversations. Social media makes connections easier, but it is the people who make them meaningful.

 

Luis Suarez at Elusa wonders if social networking will be a must-have in corporations as the current generation enters the workplace.

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Comments

[Luis Suarez]

Thanks a lot, Jeff, for the pingback! What a great post. I thoroughly enjoyed specially one of the last sentences you shared over at your blog on this very same subject and which I think would be the key towards making social media succeed in the corporate world:

"[...] in the end you can't force relationships, just like you can't create authenticity and you can't manufacturer conversations. Social media makes connections easier, but it is the people who make them meaningful."

This is just so accurate ! People need to understand that social networking and social networking tools are not tools made up for managers so that they can get all sorts of data they never thought they would get their hands on. It goes beyond that. Way beyond. Social networking has always been meant for the people, the communities that get to make use of those tools in order to be able to establish and nurture those connections, those relationships. And, whether we like it or not, without the willingness and opt-in attitude from those people belonging to those communities, we would have nothing to work with. It is all done on a voluntary basis. People wanting to connect and make a difference. Everything else is circumstantial and irrelevant, despite what some other folks may think.

[Jeffrey Treem]

Luis,

I couldn't agree more. Social networking is a bottom-up process, so while it may work when management provides the tools, the communities with the greatest commitment from members will likely be the one that form naturally.

People forget blogs, wikis and other tools first made their ways into businesses because workers instituted them themselves, not as a result of a strategic policy decision.