IBM INTEGRATED SOCIAL NETWORKS

IBM Integrated Social Networks into their Business Information Systems



IBM integrated Social Networks into their business information systems

Introduction

BM Lotus Connections brings to the world the first integrated social computing software for business, but IBM's employees have been using the core capabilities for some time. Having experienced many of the benefits, behaviors and practicalities of adopting social computing in its own environment, IBM can offer customers some insights on WHY to adopt, WHAT to expect, and HOW to prepare. IBMers know from experience the value of Lotus Connections (Agarwal, McParland, & Parry 2002, 55-67)

As has been widely communicated, Lotus Connections encompasses five discrete components: Profiles, Blogs, Dogear (social bookmarking), Communities, and Activities. Each of these has enjoyed an active life in some form within IBM prior to current incarnation in the Lotus Connections product and has proved its value through extensive use. Profiles derives from the online corporate directory IBM created for itself 10 years ago to help its employees locate people and find their phone numbers. The original developers saw that by providing programming access to the data, the directory would also become a hub for other applications and connections across IBM. So it was designed from the start not just as a phone book, but as a programming component of what we would today call social software. (Agarwal, McParland, & Parry 2002, 55-67)

Explantion

Over time this application (known as "Blue Pages"), has grown to include employees' photos and information on their skills, interests, work associates and reporting structures - creating rich online personas. Blue Pages currently holds 475,000 profiles, serves 3.5 million searches per week, and is an indispensable reference for finding and meeting up with the right people throughout the company. (Agarwal, McParland, & Parry 2002, 55-67)

For the Profiles component in the Lotus Connections product, IBM has taken the defining elements of Blue Pages and generalized them for the customer's option. Every company will have its own directory structure, way of managing its directory, and kinds of attributes it wants to profile. But however customized, Profiles can constitute the social computing core.

Blogging was introduced at IBM four years ago as a way to give employees a voice, let them share their projects and work experience, and find others with similar interests. Blogs give people a new way to think together in depth on mutual concerns, across geographic and organizational boundaries. On a recent day IBM had roughly 30,000 individual blogs and 400 group blogs, with 75,000 entries, 70,000 comments, and 30,000 subject tags. This widespread interaction on focused topics has increased knowledge transfer and collaborative idea generation across the enterprise. (Anklam 2005, 122-34)

Employees can go to a single location, Blog Central, to search or browse on all the blogs without having to recall individual URLs. This facility enables searching by content, by blog owner, or by tag, and maintains a list of the most used tags which can be filtered for discrete time periods. The Blog component of Lotus Connections is very close to ...