During yesterday’s Web 2.0 Strategies 2008in London, speakers from a range of industry sectors traversed fairlywell-worn, yet nevertheless interesting, issues associated with theadoption of social tools within businesses to improve operations andexternally to encourage better connections with customers andunderstand 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 useof social tools, a more curly issue is measuring softer consequences -such as the value of strong deep social networks, development of acollaborative environment or motivated empowered employees – if indeedthat’s possible or worthwhile at all? (For more on this see Jon Mell’sblog post: Web 2.0 ROI Discussion at Web 2.0 Strategies.)

I felt the conference was pretty light on tangible examples of howcompanies are actually using, mixing and matching social tools to suittheir needs and the translation of this into strategies for others totest. (She says as she makes a mental note to be sure to tell fellowHeadshifters 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 changebehaviours and about technology being just an enabler here (notsomething I wholly agree with).

‘Facebook’ once again proved its ubiquity by making it onto theagenda. Panel and conference members shared their experiences ofcompanies either preventing access behind the firewall, or conversely,opening up and allowing people to use it in ways that help them atwork. The main topics of conversation here were about security andtrust. Whilst the security issue should give pause for thought (likeprivacy and information confidentiality), the trust aspect is a nobrainer. If companies think Facebook is an instrument for time wastingand don’t trust their people to work autonomously and responsibly, thenthere’s little surprise that these same companies are struggling toadopt approaches and social tools grounded in openness, sharing andemergence.

Furthermore, simply allowing people to use Facebook at work doesn’taddress the deeper issue of trying to make available to peoplenetworking and other tools which help them get their jobs done.Facebook may be popular, and have some features like the ‘statusupdate’ that helps keep colleagues informed of where you are, whatyou’re doing, and your availability, but there are a host of aspectswhich are perhaps inappropriate for a professional work environment.There are other ways to achieve a ‘Facebook-like’ effect in theorganisation, with tools that can be better integrated with existingsystems, supportive of work processes and reflective of theorganisation’s and the individual’s needs

Another issue related to the above which surfaced during anotherpanel discussion, was that of approvals for externally facing employeeblogs. Initially I thought there was some contradiction when thespeaker described how companies should seek innovative ways to engagewith its customers, shift towards transparency and customer advocacy,whilst simultaneously noting that his company heavily managesemployees’ external public engagement with customers (via blogs). But,on reflection, perhaps there’s not – it’s just another form of riskaversion and control. Unlike employees however, the customers can saywhatever they want – and it may be easier for the organisationconcerned to track and respond to feedback if it is in a forum which iscloser to home.