Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work. Niall Cook, Aldershot UK and Burlington VT: Gower Publishing, 2008.
It’s very strange to be reading a book about the impact of social software when Facebook is mentioned briefly only twice within its pages. This is what happens when authors try to capture the deeper meaning of new technologies emerging and changing so quickly. The book’s 2008 publication date means that many important developments have occurred since Cook analyzed the social software scene.
Nonetheless, this book contains many principles and case studies of great value. One of its most helpful sections is its Appendix – a review of the literature by Robert A. Campbell of the University of Toronto. This eighteen-page document, with a six-page References list attached, is an extraordinary overview of the social software literature (with 2007 publications the latest to be cited). In reviewing this literature Campbell discusses his sources and method, definitions and approaches, opportunities and barriers, along with conclusions emerging from research in this field. This Appendix document is so rich one is tempted to spend more time on it. Let me at least suggest that for many Trends subscribers you may profitably begin reading this book by starting at the end of it.
Another good place to begin is to clarify definitions and categories. Cook is Worldwide Director of Marketing Technology at Hill & Knowlton, a communications consultancy. So we begin with the concept that markets are conversations. The Cluetrain Manifesto quotation opening this volume states (in 1999): “A powerful global conversation has begun.”
Cook says: “In this more mature post-Cluetrain age, these conversations are now collectively referred to as social media … all kinds of information created online by those who were previously consumers of that media”. We are dealing here with consumer- or user-generated content. The list includes: blogs; wikis; social bookmarking; tagging; RSS; mashups; instant messaging; virtual worlds; tweets; Facebook pages – you get the idea – and some of these have exploded since this book was published.
A major reason for organizations to become aware and expert in social software is that internal hierarchies are subverted by this reality. (Although Cook’s main focus is how ceding control happens in the business organization or workplace, I kept thinking as I studied this volume about the implications of all this participatory communication on those who currently control the learning and religion processes).
One of Cook’s major contributions here is the introduction of his own analytical framework. He notes there are four primary functions of social software: communication; cooperation; collaboration; and connection. He calls them throughout the book “the 4Cs”. Many readers who have worked with negotiation literature will find helpful Cook’s distinction between cooperation and collaboration.
Another reason for riding the social software tiger is that these tools all have “the ability to facilitate interactions and conversations between people…” and they are also transforming group interaction.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I examines the social media explosion and its role in “the Enterprise”. The role of platforms, rather than channels, is discussed. Thus, Enterprise 2.0 is more than Web 2.0 – with the former’s emphasis on process and output rather than simply capturing data or images.
Part II elaborates upon the 4Cs approach. Among some of the case studies examined are the BBC, Microsoft’s Academy Mobile, the Oracle IdeaFactory and the mashups of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Part III treats the implementation of social software in the Enterprise and Part IV deals with social software outside the Enterprise. The latter section addresses challenges of Internet communication, two-way dialogue and suggested policies and procedures.
In addition to the above structural overview of the book, let me list some of the very interesting conceptual issues studied throughout the volume:
·The democratization of collaboration;
The value of what we create vs. what we buy (Dewey’s learning by doing?);
Social media expertise perhaps replacing the Internet on one’s resume;
The passion people feel about sharing;
The importance of brands in a more chaotic information environment;
The role of bookmarking as an information-management tool
Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, has contributed a helpful Foreword to this book. The volume contains many valuable Tables and Figures and an Index.
I suggest two additional books to accompany this volume: The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World (David Kirkpatrick) and The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change (Jennifer Aaker, Andy Smith, Carlye Adler).