Joshua Jaffe from CNet predicted that social media software like blogs, wiki, and social network applications will be increasingly integrated as business applications. Blogs might replace e-mail blasts, wikis could strengthen existing collaboration software and social networks opens possibilities never envisioned before.
He noted key competitive edge over rivals for those who early embrace the power of social media services – to improve companies’ bottom lines and to protect reputations.
Personally, I’d suggest company to adopt blogging and wiki – integrated as part of intranet. By leveraging on RSS technology and post category – different blogs can be aggregated into meta-blogs such as team, business units, or departmental blogs rather than assigning multiple blogs. The work progress, report, and updates should be posted in either weblogs or wikis – performance appraisals could be done through feedback posted in the weblogs and the quality of posts. After some time, those weblogs could be a valuable company information resources – that document its growth and activities.
Once blogging cultures have been established internally – I think company would be ready to reach out to its customers through external corporate blogs. The external blogs will pose different challenges from internal blogs – because its focus, way to communicate, and information posted will reflect corporate image. By identifying reputable bloggers within the company – I think company will be better prepared to jump into corporate blogging than those who don’t.
Wiki is quite interesting application to have as a business application – I’ve tried to use it and agree that it has the potential as great collaborative tools. My main concern is the customization required before it can be used effectively. The wiki customization is still pretty opaque to me. Nevertheless, I still wish to have one if I work in a team project – writing documentations, or papers.
I’m not so sure about the social network application – I’ve seen great networking application, such as macromedia Intro. My main concern is on the maintenance of network – it does not feel natural and integrated into everyday’s workflow. My prediction is that social network application will be a sophisticated version of people’s directory – will not be used everyday, but important and useful. I’m looking forward for standardized data format that allow interoperability between applications and services (like FOAF?).
Update: SiliconValleyWatcher reported that IBM will jump into blogging bandwagon as well – joining Sun, Microsoft, GM, and HP.