During yesterday's Web 2.0 Strategies 2008 in London, speakers from a range of industry sectors traversed fairly well-worn, yet nevertheless interesting, issues associated with the adoption of social tools within businesses to improve operations and externally to encourage better connections with customers and understand their market(s). Issues like:

• Culture, infrastructure and security concerns holding back adoption.
• Control - over what systems people use at work, the content they create and how it is disseminated.
• The various social software options and their suitability depending on the circumstances.
• ROI - apart from identifying bottom line improvements from the use of social tools, a more curly issue is measuring softer consequences - such as the value of strong deep social networks, development of a collaborative environment or motivated empowered employees - if indeed that's possible or worthwhile at all? (For more on this see Jon Mell's blog post: Web 2.0 ROI Discussion at Web 2.0 Strategies.)

I felt the conference was pretty light on tangible examples of how companies are actually using, mixing and matching social tools to suit their needs and the translation of this into strategies for others to test. (She says as she makes a mental note to be sure to tell fellow Headshifters to stick to some grassroots presentations drawing on our Case Studies and Use Cases!). There was also lots of ruminating on how companies need to change behaviours and about technology being just an enabler here (not something I wholly agree with).

'Facebook' once again proved its ubiquity by making it onto the agenda. Panel and conference members shared their experiences of companies either preventing access behind the firewall, or conversely, opening up and allowing people to use it in ways that help them at work. The main topics of conversation here were about security and trust. Whilst the security issue should give pause for thought (like privacy and information confidentiality), the trust aspect is a no brainer. If companies think Facebook is an instrument for time wasting and don't trust their people to work autonomously and responsibly, then there's little surprise that these same companies are struggling to adopt approaches and social tools grounded in openness, sharing and emergence.

Furthermore, simply allowing people to use Facebook at work doesn't address the deeper issue of trying to make available to people networking and other tools which help them get their jobs done. Facebook may be popular, and have some features like the 'status update' that helps keep colleagues informed of where you are, what you're doing, and your availability, but there are a host of aspects which are perhaps inappropriate for a professional work environment. There are other ways to achieve a 'Facebook-like' effect in the organisation, with tools that can be better integrated with existing systems, supportive of work processes and reflective of the organisation's and the individual's needs

Another issue related to the above which surfaced during another panel discussion, was that of approvals for externally facing employee blogs. Initially I thought there was some contradiction when the speaker described how companies should seek innovative ways to engage with its customers, shift towards transparency and customer advocacy, whilst simultaneously noting that his company heavily manages employees' external public engagement with customers (via blogs). But, on reflection, perhaps there's not - it's just another form of risk aversion and control. Unlike employees however, the customers can say whatever they want - and it may be easier for the organisation concerned to track and respond to feedback if it is in a forum which is closer to home.