A June survey released by Facetime, makers of a gateway appliance for managing Web 2.0 applications, revealed the growing popularity of social networking applications in the workplace. Out of 1199 survey respondents, all IT professionals, there were more who felt that social networks played an important role in the business world than those who didn’t. What’s more, it appears that the IT folks are now seemingly OK with providing access these networks behind the firewall - even those that don’t approve of their use!

Read more at ReadWriteWeb…

The top CEOs in the country appear to be mostly absent from the social media community. That’s the result from research we conducted over the past several weeks. We looked at Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs to determine how many were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog. The results show a miserable level of engagement.

Read more at ÜberCEO…

Via Emilie Ogez News.

Via AdsVark.

Andrew McAfee:

I’ve had for some time now the vague sense that the iPhone, Twitter, Gmail, Googling, Facebook, Wikipedia, Delicious, and other runaway successes are trying to tell us something about how we want to use technology in our lives and in our work, and if we enterprise technologists listen carefully we’ll hear what that something is.

[...]

I started jotting down some comparisons based on what I’ve seen, read, and experienced for myself, then realized that I was identifying patterns [...] And I thought that in best 2.0 fashion I should open up this work early in the process by posting an initial set of patterns, seeing if they resonate with people, and asking for further contributions.

Read more on Andrew McAfee’s Blog…

A poll of 524 white-collar workers commissioned by fin­ancial comms agency FD has found worryingly high levels of employee dissatisfaction facing businesses bosses as they adjust to the economic downturn.

YouGov found that a minority of employees (44 per cent) felt their CEO showed strong, decisive leadership and only 28 per cent trusted messages from their CEO more than ‘a little’.

Only 15 per cent of respondents felt that their employer had communicated news about job security ‘very well’, with 37 per cent saying that the communi­cation had been poor or non-existent.

Read more at PRWeek… (via Geneva Communicators Network)

Despite their relative newness, companies are embracing Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking tools, blogs and webcasts for internal communications and as part of their overall technology mix, according to a new survey by Watson Wyatt, a leading global consulting firm.

Watson Wyatt’s 2009 HR Technology Trends Survey found that since the economic downturn began, 72 percent of employers have increased their use of the intranet and 61 percent have increased their use of e-mail to communicate with employees. Employers are also using newer tools – a third (32 percent) have increased their use of webcasts; 13 percent have increased their use of social networking tools; and 12 percent have increased their use of blogs for communication. Watson Wyatt’s survey was conducted in February and March 2009 and includes responses from 181 large employers.

“Web 2.0 technologies work well, in most instances, for targeting specific employee and manager groups, and companies are using them in appropriate situations. Using tools such as role-based portals, internal blogs and webcasts ensures that both managers and employees can send and receive tailored messages in an engaging format. This is useful for improving productivity and maintaining employee morale and engagement, particularly in this difficult economic time.” Jon Osborne, senior technology consultant at Watson Wyatt

Read more…

Part I - The Wikipedia Myth

Part II - People at the Center

Part III - Getting started

The 2009 survey shows that there is great reputational risk associated with social networking as 74 percent of those surveyed believe it is easy to damage a brand’s reputation via sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

As this medium is evolving, there are different opinions about use and access. For example, 60 percent of business executives say they have the “right to know” how employees portray themselves and their organizations online, while 53 percent of the employees contend that “social networking pages are none of an employer’s business.”

So what should business leaders do? One option is to establish policies and protocols. However, nearly half of the respondents say that such guidelines will not change how they behave in cyberspace. Therefore, organizations should emphasize culture, values, and ethics in order to mitigate reputational risk in these online communities.

Read more…

Update: on Slideshare (via Demain la veille)

Risky Business: Reputations Online™ is a worldwide online survey of 703 senior executives conducted by Weber Shandwick in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). It addresses such issues as the vulnerability of company reputations, the resources executives rely upon to assess company reputations, the identification and prioritization of online risks to reputation, the impact of traditional and new media on reputation, the globalization and localization of digital reputation, the viability and penetration of Web 2.0, the threat of employee cyber-sabotage, and most importantly, the best measures for protecting a company’s reputation online.

Read more at Online Reputation Management…

More than half of all developers around the globe will work on Software as a Service (SaaS) apps this year, with a surge expected in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a study released today by Evans Data Corp. North America tops the list now for regions where SaaS implementation is highest, with 30 percent working on it today.

Read more at ZDNet…

According to a study [pdf] done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed it as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption.

Software functionality came in at 1% surprisingly, with organization change at 16% and process alignment at 13%.

“You can have the best software in the world, with the most sophisticated features, analytics and integration, blah blah blah - but if people don’t use it, it isn’t going to add value. I can’t tell you how many RFPs and software selection processes I’ve been involved with in prior lives that focus almost exclusively on tiny little features that few people will ever use. This study shows that focusing so much on features is missing the boat entirely.”

Read more at ReadWriteWeb…

“At some point every few years (or every year in some cases) organisations decide that the most effective way to improve productivity or profits is to reduce expenditures.

Intranets are a common target of cost cutting, either by delaying improvements to infrastructure, cancelling new functionality, reducing author training or cutting intranet staff numbers.

In some cases these decisions are justified, however with intranets often lacking high-level representation and sponsorship, there are cases where these cuts have serious negative impacts on the entire organisation.

So are there ways to position an intranet to avoid damaging cost cuts, and even increase the budget to the area in order to generate savings elsewhere?”

Read more at eGov AU…

This short conversation between a division leader within a Fortune 500 Company and a consultant is a must-read for everyone who’s interested in social networking for the enterprise! Actually, I experienced exactly the same situation not so long ago. The wording was different but the content and the idea were identical.

“… there isn’t one company yet there is one brand. All the companies serve the customer but never in a coordinated fashion rather a splintered effort. The customer doesn’t know who is in charge of what but when dissatisfied with overall service they simply distrust the company while you say it isn’t your fault.”

The sum of social networking + social knowledge management + social watch + collaborative innovation is what we, at b-spirit, call social intelligence in the enterprise. It happens inside the company, across business units, divisions and departments, across the orgchart and regardless of the hierarchy; simultaneously it establishes crosslinks outside of the company with customers, prospects, partners, subcontractors, media organisations, even competitors.

Most companies still go for the internal and siloed approach, restricted to one department or unit. They still do not understand (or at least they pretend to) that such closed projects in closed groups are most likely to fail simply because they will be superseded, sooner or later, by larger and more global initiatives. Problem is: the loss of time and efficiency is often proportional to the loss of customers.