Culture <> Social Media

Jane McConnell raised an interesting question about the relationship between social media and culture. She asked:

Will cultural differences impact adoption of social media? Will culture “eat” social media for breakfast? or will social media “eat” culture?

I find social media interesting because I see the relationship between social media and culture as bi-directional. The (company) culture has to fit social media (culture) for successful adoption. But I also see culture change due to social media use. I think this has to do with the underlying concepts of social media, like relational networks, information is social and humans as social beings. These concepts fit us people very well, because they are deeply human. Tapping into these concepts when rolling out social media is a key to success (and positive cultural change). Rolling it out as technology (non-human focus) is a key to failure (and negative cultural change).


Also refer to this interesting post about cultural differences. (HT, Ana Silva for pointer!)

An implicit expertise network / IBM´s Expert Network on Slideshare

Luis Suarez recently pointed me to this. IBM set up an Expert Network on Slideshare, giving us a way to see all the slides produced by IBM-ers. Adam Christensen has a post explaining why this was done.

This got me thinking. I think this is a smart move.  Isn’t this a great way to implicitly show the expertise of IBM-ers? Of course LinkedIn tries to do the same, the other way around. You set up your profile. And you can connect Slideshare to your profile. Problem is, nobody says that profile is correct. And clicking through to the proof (e.g. your presentations) is not that easy. Furthermore you can´t see if that person is the only expert in that organization or the organization as a whole has expertise in a certain area.

I think if you’re looking for someone from IBM to help you out, the Expert Network on Slideshare will get you to the right man/woman much more quickly. What do you think of this move? And do you think such a network in Slideshare is a better expertise locator than LinkedIn? I´d love to hear your thoughts!

Global Intranet Trends 2011 by @netjmc Published

Just wanted to write a short post to create some buzz for Jane McConnell’s latest Global Intranet Trends 2011 report. I hope you all go and read it. Jane posted a couple of highlight posts about the report. I’m reading it now and will write one or more posts about it. I love reading the report. You get a great overview of the state of affairs in the (social) intranet landscape. It’s also a great way to benchmark your intranet or an intranet you’re working on.

This year Jane also published a free executive snapshot. It gives you a good idea of the quality and richness of the report. I hope you go ahead and download/buy the report. And also participate in the survey next year!