Business Adaptation

Circa 2002, the internet had just gone through its first burn-out but was revving up for its next re-invention.  Technorati was the way to search blogs; Blogger wasn't Google; PhotoMatt had just started Wordpress, and "Cmdr Taco" at Slashdot could still bring down servers.

When the bottom fell out of the tech sector in 2000-2001 it didn't only kill off then worthless companies, it opened up the trap door to let in the bottom-feeders:  the spammers.  It was about this time that email started to get really ugly.

By now, everyone had multiple email addresses (mostly Hotmail or Yahoo accounts; Google didn't launch Gmail until mid-2004), and boy did we have a mess on our hands.

The Downward Spiral

In 2002, CNN via TechWeb reported that "Spam may overtake e-mail in 2003."

By 2007 it is declared that 95% of all e-mail sent in 2007 was spam.

In 2009 Spam Assassins knocked-off some major defenders, but shortly after the New York Times reported that "Spam [was] Back to 94% of All E-Mail."

Prior to this, Email was the most convenient way (not the most efficient way) of communicating with folks - but it was becoming more and more difficult. Not only did spam clog up our in-boxes, it interfered with our productivity and our ability to communicate and share files with one another. In effect, it interfered with our ability to collaborate and connect with other people.

In tandem to this mess, we were getting bombarded with instant messages from our friends and colleagues (because email was too slow). In addition to multiple email accounts, we all had multiple instant message accounts as well (still do!). Nevermind the security issue - the real issue was the noise. Too much noise.  We needed a better way.

Social What?

It is here, right about this time (circa 2003-04), that Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites arrived.  Social networking represented a new way for us to communicate and connect with each other.  Instead of dealing with the mess of email, we connected through a webpage and posted messages to our friends. Around the same time that social networking was born, a sudden resurgence in business collaboration occurs as a result of an obsession with the term "Web 2.0" coined by Tim O'Reilly.

Shortly after, in early 2006, Twitter is founded and all hell breaks loose.

Millennials. Email What?

Simultaneously, Millennials were entering college and looking for different ways to connect with each other - ways that mirrored how they texted each other on cell phones and instant messages.  A 2005 Pew survey reveals that "Internet users from 12 to 17 years old say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions."

In 2007, Chad Lorenz of Slate Magazine wrote about a teenager's life without email:

Let's think about this from a teenager's perspective. First, you'd never send an e-mail to 200 friends saying, "It's Friday and I'm ready to party!!!" But with a Twitter tweet or a Facebook status update, you can broadcast such a message to all of your buddies without seeming like a total dweeb. Need to make your party plans for Friday night? You'd be a fool to send an e-mail and twiddle your thumbs waiting for responses; it's speedier to exchange IMs with your friends. If you then need to tell those friends how awesome they are for joining you, post a message on their Facebook or MySpace page, so the world can see. And mobile phones take instant--and constant--contact into a whole other realm. You can argue with your girlfriend all night without having to leave the party. Then, the next morning, you can change your Facebook relationship status to "single." And there you have it--a whole weekend of social drama lived out and publicized without a single e-mail.

So How Do We Adapt?

How do we, as business workers, deal with the change that is upon us? How do we hire and manage a workforce that 'doesn't like to email,' and prefers to Poke you on Facebook than to pick up the phone and call you?  How do we leverage technology to be better workers?  Better managers? Better companies?

For the first few years at Central Desktop, we always emphasized the technology, the infrastructure, the application, the product. And while people are more productive as a result of the technology, the focus of the success (and the reason why people buy our product) is because of the people, not the technology.

For years we solely described ourselves as 'collaboration software.' But when we spoke with our customers and asked them how they were using Central Desktop they remarkably replied with the same answers:

"We use Central Desktop to connect our people located in disparate offices."

"...to collaborate with our contractors and vendors outside of our company."

"...to manage our people and projects more efficiently."

"...to gather feedback from our employees."

"Central Desktop makes me and my people more productive."

Notice the theme?  It is all about the people.  It wasn't about the project, or the cool graph, or the audit trail, it was about the people.

As a result, today, we work hard to emphasize the people and are constantly looking for new ways to accommodate "the people." We strive to build software that connects people and embraces the 'social' component of what they do, but instead of just 'bringing Facebook to the office', we strive to keep productivity and business value top of mind.  It's not just about bringing social tools into the office - it's about bringing value and meaning to the office.

Even as 'early adopters of Twitter ' it took us several months to find any business purpose for it.  For months we lampooned Twitter.  But then, I started using it; and our customers started talking about us on it, and our media and analyst contacts were using it, and now the Iranians are using it.

What We Mocked, We Have Come To Embrace

Twitter, as a communication tool, has changed us too.  Not only has Twitter become a useful customer support and marketing tool (see my prior post on this topic), but Twitter has vastly influenced our Social Technology Platform as well. Based on customer feedback and internal research, we've decided to integrate micro-blogging (we call it "Status Updates") into our collaboration platform (we are officially announcing it at Enterprise 2.0 next week in Boston). We found that our own usage of Twitter and our customer's usage of Twitter was 'yet another stream (channel) of noise to manage.' It was 'yet another application to manage and toggle with.'

The Status Update feature accommodates our customers desire to integrate Twitter-like functions into their day-to-day activities, but for business, and within Central Desktop!  Business Centric Status Updates brings a new dynamic to how people communicate within a collaborative environment.

Instead of a binary update that you would see in Recent Activity Log that "Isaac Uploaded a File" or "Isaac  Completed a Task", Status Updates allows the user to inject meaning and context into their activities. For example, I can post an update to Central Desktop that "I'm giving a briefing to Rob Koplowitz from Forrester Research" or that "Isaac is trying to make a PHP class behave like an array." These statements provide context to the activities that I'm working on - far more context and meaning than a binary statement such as "Conference Call with Forrester" or "Checked-In File."

I'll be talking more about this topic next week in Boston at Enterprise 2.0 (I'll be on a Panel titled, "How Twitter Changes Everything"

Are You Adapting?

So how is social technology helping you grow your business? How is social technology helping you execute your business?

Are you still stuck in the ways of email?  Don't worry, it isn't going away tomorrow, but email is going the way of snail mail; and for good reason.  Email is less immediate, less flexible and less personal.  Social Technology allows us to communicate and work transparently, in more personal ways with each other.

Businesses fear losing control.  For years, business owners and CIOs worked hard to control their people; but they can't anymore. It is virtually impossible to control how your employees work, how they connect, and how they communicate. Unless you lockdown their internet access entirely (not likely) your people will look for alternative ways to communicate and collaborate, (and they should).

Peter Whitehead at Financial Times quoted Gartners' Steve Prentice today:

"Company boards don't recognize what IT is or does any more," he says. "It used to be a thing that you used to increase productivity or automate processes, but that's been done. Even chief information officers, who thoroughly understand enterprise IT, have been left behind by social IT - which they can't control."

Today's business is transparent, people-centric and turning hierarchies upside down, and it is because of the technology. It is the technology that grants more freedom to employees.

Today's workforce (even the 'old folks') are blogging, posting and Twittering. They have figured out that there are better ways.

Instead of emailing a file, they post it to Google Docs.  Instead of calculating in Excel and circulating for input, they post it to Google Spreadsheets. They coordinate their meetings via Facebook and Skype.  They network and hire through LinkedIn. They emote and market themselves on Twitter.

The fact is that the workforce is changing as a result of the technology. We are adapting - for the better!

New Platforms Emerging

As such, technology providers are adapting too.  While a student can manage multiple applications and logins to communicate and share information, a business user can't.  Students and consumers don't share the same security concerns that businesses value (often as a result of the customers they serve).  Business users need more.  What is emerging are platforms that consolidate these tools under one umbrella for business.

Instead of creating content on Google, communicating via email and IM, collaborating via wikis and connecting via Facebook, business users need platforms that bring it all together.

Platforms that embrace the social technology that people are already using but in safe, configurable environments.

Social Technology is changing the way we work. It is harder to hide in your cubicle (and it should be!). A transparent and connected environment fosters people to work openly in a network that embraces the idea that everyone knows EXACTLY what everyone is doing.