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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Serie: SAS Institute Inc
- Sprache: Englisch
Practical guidance on how to successfully introduce enterprise social networks to connect employees While there are a fast growing number of books around social media and enterprise 2.0, the focus is often on the technical tools. Connecting Organizational Silos approaches social media and enterprise 2.0 from a knowledge flow management perspective. It offers practical and specific guidance on what to do and what not to do when introducing social media in an organization. This concise, easy-to-read guide offers a nuts-and-bolts look at how to get started in social media and drive it to success. * Examines knowledge flows and the deployment of social media networks within organizations * Helps organizations become more successful in introducing social media tools and platforms into their organizations By incorporating social media into their business, organizations will be able to make better use of their member's knowledge and thereby become more competitive. Connecting Organizational Silos discusses all aspects of enterprise social media and how it can help to drive corporate growth.
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Seitenzahl: 340
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Your Organization Is Not “The Web”
Terminology and Definitions
From Documents to Flows
Social Side of Knowledge Flows
KFM versus Social Media
Case Study 1: The Hub (SAS)
Case Study 2: RedNet (Red Ventures)
Notes
Chapter 2: Why Should You Care about Social Media?
Motivations
Network Dynamics
Breaking Isolation
The Super Watercooler
Handling the Dynamic Organization
Innovation Enablement
Notes
Chapter 3: Getting Started
Inside versus Outside Social Media
Differences in the World
Laying the Foundation
How to Really Get It Off the Ground
Launch: Project or Initiative?
Technology: Build or Buy
Notes
Chapter 4: Roles
More than Just Socializing
Individuals and Departments
Mobilize Your Evangelizers
Notes
Chapter 5: Driving for Success
Get All Stakeholders Involved Early
Go Viral
Freedom within Borders: The Power of Guidelines
Training Portfolio
Pulse
Executive Participation: Not Just Buy-In
Notes
Chapter 6: Fighting Barriers
Fear of Losing Control
Unlearning
Dealing with “Stupid”
Integration
No Time to Post: Portfolio Management
Legal Concerns
Note
Chapter 7: Technology: The Enabler
Social or Supporting Social
I Want an Internal Facebook
The Power of Simplicity
Multidimensional Navigation
Groups or Communities
Notification Management
Notes
Chapter 8: Social Media Analytics
Analyze What is Going On
Social Network Analysis versus Reporting
Choosing the Right KPIs
Notes
Chapter 9: What’s Next
Advances in Technology
Dealing with Channel Overload
More Social or More Technology
Interaction Trends
Notes
Chapter 10: Final Thoughts
Appendix A: Key Success Factors
Appendix B: Additional Resources
About the Author
Index
WILEY & SAS BUSINESS SERIES
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Cover image: Michael Rutkowski
Cover design: © Daniel Halvorson/iStockphoto
Copyright © 2012 by SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leistner, Frank.
Connecting organizational silos : taking knowledge flow management to the next level with social media/Frank Leistner.
p. cm. — (Wiley & SAS business series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-38643-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-41739-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-42193-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-43444-4 (ebk);
1. Knowledge management. 2. Social media. I. Title.
HD30.2.L4527 2012
658.4’038—dc23
2012026663
To my wife, Inge, and my daughters, Alexandra and Franziska, your ongoing encouragement and support have fueled my passion
Foreword
Frank Leistner and I have similar views. We believe that we will create value through the movement of knowledge around our organization in response to a need. The question is how to get this knowledge flow established across the organization, bypassing the various barriers that we encounter.
In the past, we have done this by organizing in the same physical area those activities that work together. This created silos in the organization, each with its own strong culture that developed over time. Today, as we move more and more to a global arena, it becomes necessary to share knowledge across the entire organization. While email is a big step in this direction, it does not allow for the free flow of ideas and knowledge across the organizational silos in a collaborative format, but rather tends to reinforce the existing structure of silos by speeding up communication between them.
To break through the culture of our existing silo structure, and to facilitate new collaborative ventures across the silos, we have found that enterprise social networks (ESNs) are particularly useful. This book is about how to get an ESN established and functioning in your organization on a global basis.
The detail that Frank Leistner goes into by describing all aspects of setting up and managing an ESN is particularly helpful for those of you that are starting out on this transformation of your collaborative framework in your organization.
And, I confess that I learned a lot about how to enhance the performance of such a network even though I have been looking at this issue for many years.
As you try to move along the continuum of knowledge flow, going from communication to collaboration to innovation to speed of innovation in your organization, you will not find a better primer on how to do it than this book.
I recommend it highly.
Robert H. Buckman
CEO of Buckman Laboratories, retired, and
Author of Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization
Preface
It was April 2011 and the day after I spoke to a group of MBA students, professors, the dean, and some local business representatives at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was going to lunch with my friend and host at Queens, Professor Will Sparks. We started reflecting on the night before. It hadn’t really been a presentation to be exact—it was more a conversation on stage with questions from Will and the audience.
We had agreed beforehand on a few general topics (mostly from my first book, Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow), but just before we went into the lecture hall to take our seats on stage, I told Will that I was excited to see one of my latest activities, a recently launched internal social network, taking off with great success. During the talk (they call these events “Leadership in Action” at Queens) at about halftime, Will directed the conversation to what I saw as the next stage of knowledge flow management at SAS. And the audience that had been alert all along suddenly became really active, shooting a range of great questions not only about what we had done, what worked, and what presented challenges, but also about social media in general and how to deal with it on a personal level.
At our lunch the next day, Will suddenly said to me: “You should write another book about this. Many organizations are struggling with it, just like they are struggling with getting their knowledge to flow in general.”
Since I was still focused on the first book, I wasn’t sure I was ready to dive into the next one, but Will had definitely planted a seed in my brain. On my flight from Charlotte to Washington, I pulled out an old meeting agenda and frantically scribbled a few crowded mind maps onto the back. I began to get more and more excited about the idea. I was convinced that there was enough there for another book.
At the time there were a number of social media books out there, and I am sure that while you are reading these lines there is an even greater number of them. However, after looking at some of the titles, I saw that there were a few things that might be unique about the one I had in mind.
The first difference was the link from social media to knowledge flow management—looking at social media within organizations as a key way to enable internal sharing. The success of the first book showed me that there are many individuals who do not care much for complex models and are not satisfied with just an explanation of what the tools are and how they can use them. These readers are looking more for a guide on how they can deal with knowledge sharing through social media on a day-to-day basis. They want to read some real-life, proven examples of what usually works and what does not. They want stories that they can apply on their own journey in introducing social media into their organizations. They want a fairly easy-to-read book that is not too long and has a personal touch to it and provides a balance of day-to-day usable material as well as some inspiring visions. And last but not least, they want a book that is also fun to read.
Those were my key framing ideas while writing this book and I really hope that while you are reading the coming pages, you will discover that I largely succeeded in creating something that brings unique value to you, because that is why I write books in the first place.
Helping to guide knowledge flows in organizations is my passion. When I discovered this discipline (often referred to as knowledge management) in the mid-1990s, I was convinced this would be the right one to fuel that passion.
Over the years, I, personally, have moved away from the term knowledge management (KM) and have come to the conclusion that knowledge flow management (or KFM) is a much better term to use. I also moved beyond the primarily technical view of knowledge as data, and rather consider it to be something that is connected to humans—always. Once it is external of one’s mind, it becomes information. If knowledge is what is in people’s head, you cannot manage it. What you can manage though is the flow of knowledge between humans.
What is exchanged is information, but as this can be used to recreate knowledge by combining received information with prior knowledge and experience, you can say that in the end it is knowledge that flows.
The biggest problems with the traditional KM view are the focus on technology and the view that a technical construct (like a database) would actually contain knowledge (e.g., the knowledge captured in documents). Document sharing is important since it is one way of laying out information in a way that others can build knowledge from it. But don’t be mistaken—a document will never represent the full knowledge that an individual (or group for that matter) might have. It can serve as a great pointer to the one who knows, though.
The issue with documents is that they are fairly costly (in terms of time and effort) to produce, and that situations in today’s world are often too complex and fast moving to write everything down. If you observe how people share knowledge these days, you will find that they still like to turn to the person next to them, or call an expert they know. Many times they prefer this to referring to a document, no matter how well it might have been researched and written.
This is where social media comes in. It is another tool and, if you think about it, it is not as new as it might appear. In fact, you could call the watercooler or the coffee machine one of the great social media tools of the last century. The issue with the watercooler and coffee machine is that they do not scale—and scale and high-cardinality, multipoint connection is what the recent social media tools offer, making them very good enablers to support that need for human interaction across distance, when creating a document is too costly or too slow, and it is too hard to get to the right person in time. This does not mean documentation is out of the picture. However, social media extends the portfolio of enabling technologies that make it possible for knowledge to flow within an organization and help to connect silos for better communication and cross-learning.
Social media technology, processes (these are often not spelled out and written down, but rather driven by convention),1 and related human behaviors are capable of introducing new ways of enablement. As a result, there are new possibilities for collaboration in a more general and multidimensional way (e.g., groups, multiple hashtag dimensions, searches, follower-relations). This means that there are better chances for discovery, faster connection to experts, and faster and wider idea sharing, which all together can drive innovation. Speed is one of the key points. The speed at which dynamic networks can build and the way they can adapt to changing situations is higher than it used to be with tools like mailing lists, document repositories, or even phone lines.
Very similar to other technologies that support knowledge flows, social media needs people to drive and lead an initiative that adds a lot of the other elements beyond the technology. This leadership element is often underestimated. One of the reasons for misjudging the importance lies in the nature of what we often experience on external social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, and other such platforms seem to have come out of nowhere and grown to hundreds of millions of users. But by the time the majority adopts them, usually a lot of blood, sweat, and programming have gone into their development. As easy as these platforms are to use, to build them was usually not a pure “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” idea. Behind them is usually a single person or small group that had the immense passion and energy to pull it through the bootstrap phase, adjust as necessary, market the idea, and find ways that knowledge about the platform itself could spread in a viral way.
Social media platforms in organizations, also called ESNs, are not self-runners. I am not talking about control and filtering, but rather guidance and strategy to create a flourishing community (or multiple for that matter) that will manage change and flow adaptively—and all this under the guidance of people that have the passion and vision to make it a success.
This book focuses on how social media can lead to success in organizations. The success of social media on the external level has created the increasingly widespread wish for using such technology within the borders of organizations, including but not limited to corporations.2 The following chapters will not provide exhaustive coverage of all the possible social media tools out there, as there are plenty of books that will introduce you to those. Instead the book will look at the key elements necessary to start an initiative to launch an organizational social media platform and sustain it. As it will outline success factors on the way, it can be equally interesting to those who have already started the process and want to learn about factors that will make their ESN even more successful or save it from future failure.
The audience that will get value from this book is not limited to those in charge of launching and running organizational social media platforms. As more and more organizations deploy these platforms, it is essential that all levels, up to the executives introducing them, equally understand the potential strengths and dangers for the organization. Fear has been a key reason why some organizations have been slower to adopt than others. But fear needs to make way for proper risk assessment, and in order to participate in that phase, executives should not just leave it to their IT or communications department to make all the calls.
Technology is an important part, though, and, especially if you are building your own social media platform in-house, it is essential that those involved with developing or adapting it have a broad understanding beyond the technical features. This book will give them some ideas on how to develop that understanding and have them always keep the human factor in mind to develop a platform that can be successful from a business point of view and not as a technical construct.
Last but not least, the individuals who use the platform as users can gain some valuable insights as well; and by speaking up (and sharing their ideas via the social media platform itself, for example) they can influence success. Individual users are usually at the forefront to provide a lot of the guidance as to what direction a given organizational social media initiative should move. If you, as a user, believe that some useful function or feature is missing, why not speak up and influence others to become part of a movement that will end up in an improvement?
AN OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK
Chapter 1 sets the stage to position this book, clarify some of the terminology used, and introduce some of the key underlying ideas in broad terms. It will prepare you for the rest of the book. It also quickly outlines a couple of case studies that are used as examples of how you can deal with issues arising during the introduction of an ESN.
Chapter 2 offers reasons why, as an organization or as an individual, you should care about social media. It discusses typical motivations for introducing an ESN and dives deeper into several of the key ways you can provide value to your organization and enhance organizational communication.
Chapter 3 covers topics you need to carefully think about before getting into employing social media tools in general and an ESN specifically. By looking deeper at the differences between what you might be familiar with from external social media platforms and an ESN it helps to lay the foundation for approaching the introduction in a way that sets you up for success.
Chapter 4 names and explains the different roles that individuals will play during the introduction and, equally if not more important, during the life cycle of the ESN. It also provides ideas on when and how to mobilize people to play those roles.
Chapter 5 extends the discussion on success factors beyond the roles to include components like guidelines, training, and the creation of an ongoing initiative pulse.
Chapter 6 provides a slightly different view on the introduction by looking at the main issues with a barrier view. The idea is that knowledge would flow without any issues if there weren’t certain barriers from keeping the flow from happening. By looking into the key barriers and offering strategies on how to remove or at least reduce them, you get another set of tools to enable ongoing success for your ESN.
Chapter 7 discusses the role that technology plays in contrast to the social aspects brought to the initiative through the involvement of people. It does not attempt to provide an overview of available social media technologies, but rather introduce some of the key features that an ESN should provide and why those features are essential. Beyond introducing features it also explains processes on how to efficiently use those features.
Chapter 8 talks about ways to analyze and steer the ESN. It offers advice on measuring and reporting and also provides guidance on how to choose proper key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should measure in order to assess and influence the success of your platform.
Chapter 9 offers some outlooks of potential future developments. Predictions in this area are very difficult, as things move extremely quickly. Nevertheless in this chapter I will outline some visions on where organizational social media might move, what technologies will likely be influencing next generations of platforms, and what that might mean for your own initiative.
Chapter 10 finishes with some final thoughts and advice on how to deal with social media for the long term and how to deal with new developments, as outlined in Chapter 9.
At the end of the book, you will find a summary of the key success factors in Appendix A and a few additional reading resources in Appendix B.
I would recommend reading the chapters in order, but if you cannot wait, I am sure you can get value from diving into some of the chapters directly and later use what you learn as a reference should you have issues regarding a given area.
The field of social media is constantly and quickly evolving. New developments in technology will change some perspectives outlined in the chapters you have in front of you. On the other hand, the book outlines some of those principles that I am convinced will hold longer-term, independent of what technology might be used, as well.
Social media is here to stay, as it touches on key principles of human communication. People want to interact with each other. The easier it becomes to interact and the more value people get from doing so, the more likely it will be that they will interact, despite any geographic or organizational boundaries.
NOTES
1. A great example is the convention to use a certain #tag. It is not written down which one to use; someone might start using one and it spreads organically within a community as a term to use to build a connection for a certain topic.
2. For simplicity, I am distinguishing between external and internal here. One recent trend is actually to bridge the two and include external parties by giving them access to (at least some part of) your internal ESN.
Acknowledgments
There are two key elements that need to come together for me to consider writing a book, I have learned. On one side there is the need to have built a sufficient amount of domain knowledge, and on the other side there needs to be a compelling event. In the case of this book, the event was the moment when Queens College Professor Will Sparks insisted on social media platforms in organizations being a topic worth writing about and suggesting to me that I might be a good person to do it. For that spark, I cannot thank Will enough.
What made it easier to enter the book process again was the very positive experience I had with writing Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow. And this is in large part thanks to my editor at SAS, Stacey Hamilton, and all those at Wiley who eased my fears about jumping into such a project. I was very lucky to have Stacey help me, once again, when I was writing the book you are reading now.
Fritz Lehman, VP of Professional Services and my current manager at SAS, was just as supportive as Scott Isaacs, to whom I reported when I first explored the new project.
I am very thankful to all those involved at SAS who have put so much effort into launching our own enterprise social network (ESN) and making it a success. I learned tremendously from them. To start, there is Karen Lee, head of corporate communications and key sponsor for the ESN. With her ongoing enthusiasm she has also made sure that key stakeholders within the organization bought into the concept. My regular discussions with Karen were very inspiring. Becky Graebe and Lainie Hoverstad played central roles in managing the project at SAS and their ideas on how to make it fly were a great inspiration for me. Another great sparring partner was technical lead Joe O’Brien, and his colleague Randy Mullis was a great help in regards to understanding analytical capabilities of the ESN.
A big thank you goes to Wiley development editor Stacey Rivera and all the rest of the staff at Wiley. They do such a great job turning some raw pieces of text and charts into something that looks so much better.
After my last book, I started to increasingly come into contact with other authors and, as they know what is involved in writing, they are always a great inspiration. Just to name a couple that always inspire me with their great positive attitude, I want to thank Michael “MMMMIIIIKKKKEEEE” Raithel from Westat and Chris Hemedinger from SAS, both of them repeat SAS book authors. Chris plays many roles actually, as he is also one of the key activists on the SAS social media front and has been a reviewer of the book as well.
Other reviewers that I want to sincerely thank for their valuable comments are Kirsten Hamstra and Louise Smith. Kirsten has been a key driver of social media for SAS for a number of years, with a central role in coordinating our external efforts. The discussions I had with her over those years have always left me with new ideas. Louise Smith is the SAS Asia Pacific Knowledge Manager and for over a decade she has been a close affiliate when it comes to anything related to knowledge sharing and knowledge flows, apart from being a great friend, of course.
After seeing him on stage at KMWorld 2011, I had a dream candidate for writing a foreword for this book; someone who has reached legendary status in the KM community; despite all his experience, he has stayed so wonderfully young in his thinking. When Bob Buckman agreed to spend the time to read the manuscript and write the foreword I was really honored and proud. A big thanks to Bob. I also really enjoyed the interaction with Barbara McConville, his right hand, who helped to facilitate the process so nicely.
In recent years I have become more and more active within the Swiss KM Forum (SKMF), a great organization facilitating exchanges on knowledge-related topics between practitioners and scholars primarily within Switzerland. Many discussions and some events have helped frame the ideas that I had for the new book. I want to especially thank Veronique Sikora from Business School Lausanne, Gil Regev from EPFL Lausanne, and Pavel Kraus, the president of the SKMF, for their input and ongoing encouragement.
Regular lunch discussions with Beat Meyer from UBS and Beat Knechtli from PwC allowed me to take away some great feedback, new inspiration, and ideas. A big thank you goes to both Beats for listening and offering thoughtful advice.
To get a more balanced perspective on the ideas around social network launches it was very important to have an outside case study to draw from. I want to thank Red Ventures for allowing me to learn from their experiences. It all started with a tour through their incredible facilities outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, in the fall of 2011. A special thank you to Kylie Craig from Red Ventures for spending time on Skype and phone discussions with me to provide valuable feedback on my ideas and views.
Writing takes energy and I want to thank my colleagues at the SAS Switzerland office for energizing me with their interest in the book progress on an ongoing basis: Christine Schieback, Susy Brunner, Barbara Frauenfeld, Leo Gambini, Carmelo Iantosca, Michael Wolf, Karl-Heinz Saxer, Ghislain Wies, and several others have really helped build that energy.
When it comes to providing positive encouragement nobody beats my wife, Inge, though. She knew that the writing phases would steal away time we usually spend together (on weekends or evenings) but nevertheless encouraged me to go for it again. My grown-up daughters Alexandra and Franziska provided their regular thoughtful feedback via Skype from France and Germany as well as during visits in Switzerland. I am very thankful to have such a great family.
Frank Leistner
June 2012
Chapter 1
Your Organization Is Not “The Web”
The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind’s problems. I believe that very much.
Steve Jobs (1955–2011), late Apple CEO, Wired Magazine, 1996
TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS
Most of the terms needed to understand this book are explained alongside discussions of surrounding concepts; however, there are a few terms that are worth spending a bit more time on to make sure there is a common understanding. At the time of this writing, there is a lot of hype surrounding social media, and I expect it to be high on the agenda in many organizations for a little while longer. But with so many parties using the term, there is often a range of different understandings and definitions.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines social media as:
forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).1
For the purpose of this book, organizational social media should be understood as the collection of tools and processes that support social interaction within any type of private or public organization. Social media tools can come as separate applications (e.g., chat, wikis, social bookmarking, blogs) or in a more integrated networking platform (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr). The term that seems to be catching on when specifically describing networking platforms in organizations is enterprise social network (ESN). Since I will focus on launching those types of platforms, I will use that term accordingly.
A few more words in regards to the term social. Why are these new technologies called “social,” whereas earlier technologies that also helped people interact (e.g., email, telephone) are not? The difference is in the focus on the lasting social connection. Email lets you interact and engage, but what social media tools and platforms add is a more permanent link between people. A follower relationship on Twitter, a friendship on Facebook, or a connection on LinkedIn, represent more permanent connections that go beyond exchanging information to say, “We have a relationship.”
It is also typical for social media relationships to be kept outside of the participants’ private spheres. The data as well as the relationship link is not kept in your own playpen but in a system outside of it. Nevertheless everybody owns their data themselves. Today’s social networks are different than those that existed in the days of cell phone contact lists because they are actively managed by their participants and can be used to create content and digital cultures. Connections are not built by simply transmitting personal data; they work on a deeper level to include all the defining elements of people as social beings. While people in our network manage their actual social lives, by simply connecting to them we can get very easy access to what is happening in their environment. That makes it quite similar to interacting with friends in real life, where we learn about a wide range of events in their lives by talking with, listening to, and seeing each other. One good example of similar effects in the social media world can be seen on LinkedIn, a business social media network. Users manage simple, individual links between people. These social media connections replace all those business card collections, phone books, email contact lists, and so forth. The beauty of LinkedIn is that a link can stay current even if a person moves from one city, country, or company to another. She simply updates her data in one single place and everyone in her network will have access to her latest phone number, job description, website, email, and mailing address instantly. This resolves the issue of outdated data that existed with managing traditional social networks.
This same principle is also used in syndication methods. You might have heard of RSS feeds, which are basically streams of headlines that use a standard format to syndicate (or disseminate) web content that is frequently updated. RSS was originally an abbreviation for RDF site summary, though it also is commonly called Really Simple Syndication. The simplicity lies in the way that you can leverage content from one place to another on the web.
The word network is also used in many different ways, often as a synonym for web. Simply put, a network is the infrastructure that power or data moves on. Networking is a verb that we use to describe how we build a collection of connections to other people—people that we have some type of social interaction with. In many cases, social networks are between those with the potential to interact, as one person might link to another so that if he ever needed anything from that person in the future he could act on that link. In this definition, social networks are not really new—but the way we can manage those networks across the globe, creating relationships with a single click, is dramatically different and a lot more powerful. Interestingly (and I am not sure if Facebook did this on purpose), the metaphors we use evoke Stone-Age communications; we write on somebody else’s wall to leave a message, as prehistoric humans may have done 50,000 years ago when they found a friend’s cave empty but did not have time to wait for his return.
In the preface, I talked about the fact that I prefer the term knowledge flow management (KFM) over knowledge management (KM), as it more exactly describes what we can and cannot do with it (i.e., manage knowledge that is in people’s head). For a complete discussion of the differences between KM and KFM, and how to enable knowledge flow in organizations, I would like to refer you to my earlier book, Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow: How to Make Knowledge Sharing Work.2 (A free download of Chapter 1 is available for on the book’s website, http://masterknowledgeflow.ch.)
As mentioned, I will not go into deep detail on the different social media tools are out there, as you can easily get that somewhere else. But there are a few terms I want to make sure you have a solid understanding of before you read on. One of those more important terms (mentioned briefly in the preface) is a tag. A tag is similar to a label that might be used to identify a piece of merchandise. In social media terms, it is basically a word that you use to describe a piece of information. You could also call it metadata, as it is data about data. However, tags have taken on an even more central role in some social media platforms, and to understand the power of them in that sense is an important part of understanding the power of social media in general. Good examples of this are the hashtags, which are denoted using the octothorpe (#) and followed by whatever word the user wants to identify.
Users of Twitter, the microblogging service, rely on hashtags extensively. On Twitter, people communicate via messages of 140 characters or less. As part of those 140 characters, users tag certain terms with hashtags to provide more context without taking up space. For instance, someone tweeting about social media could use #socialmedia in a message to indicate that they wish to be part of a larger social discussion about the topic. Once a word or phrase (without spaces) is tagged with the #, it is easy for other users to track, find, and connect with related tweets, posts, links, and content. It also facilitates trend following within a particular network, time period, or community.
The interesting part about tags, and what might seem a little odd at first, is that anyone can make one up. After a while, communities drift toward a common hashtag language, either by explicitly established rules or through a more organic fashion. For instance, when we talked about the juggling convention in Paris this month (yes, I’m also a juggler), participants agreed to use #juglparis2012. On a more organic level, if 90 percent of tweets use the tag #kfm to talk about knowledge flow management, it is a good bet that I will follow suit when I tweet about the topic. It is amazing how quickly this process can happen. People want their tweets to be read and see that others are filtering on certain hashtags, so sometimes a tagging convention will be adopted within minutes. For example, see what happens on Twitter only minutes after some big catastrophe (like an earthquake or tsunami). There might be more than one tag used at first, but very quickly there won’t be more than a couple that carry most of the key messages. It is linguistic evolution under a time-lapse camera.
Another way that tags often get pushed is through so-called tag-clouds. Tag-clouds are visual tools that show which words are trending in popularity. They are depicted as word collections or clusters where different words appear in different sizes—and sometimes even emphasized using boldface—to show which words are currently generating the most buzz within a particular community. By selecting a word in a tag-cloud, you can view a collection of content in which that particular word has been tagged.
What makes tags so powerful is the way that they can define a virtual context for content without having to draw a fixed link between bits of information themselves. There is no real limit to the number of relationship dimensions being created, and these can change and evolve with extreme speed, especially when compared to fixed taxonomies. I will go more into the power of tags and tagging in later chapters.
For completeness, here are a few more details on blogs and microblogs. Blog (short for weblog) is a web-based platform that houses content that is created through chunks of text, video, images, and audio that is posted at different time periods. Each entry is usually referred to as a post. Blog posts are typically around half a page, but can be longer or shorter as well. The timeline is the key in navigating blogs; usually the latest entry is shown at the top and, as readers scroll down, they can view previous posts. Very old entries are archived away to keep the visible content manageable in size, but they are often accessible through archive browsing and keyword search features.
Twitter is considered a microblogging
