Posted by Bill Ives

This is a question I see discussed more often. Here is a post on the collaboration platforms that are integrating micro-messaging. What has been your experience? Is there a role of both approaches in parallel with different functions? Are there different adoption challenges?

Here is a set of comments from an email group that I belong to. I have dropped the names and the names of companies (to protect the innocent) and vendors as this is a general discussion that goes beyond individual tools.

First Commenter: “We’re really interested in using (micro-messaging tool) and have a few people on it already. BUT, it’s yet another user interface, another site, another URL for people to remember and interact with! It’d be great if someone would reverse-engineer the core functionality into (collaboration platform) so we can have micro-blogging functionality in the same collaboration system…”

Second Commenter: “I’ve heard the same comment from people internal and external to (our firm). There is a population that sees integration of microblogging with other collaboration tools as necessary for far reaching adoption.”

Third Commenter: “There is a powerful analogy with Instant Messaging here. Most IM systems are no longer standalone but integrated with email and other communications systems. Microblogging is a technical functionality / human activity that’s part of broader set of technical functions & human activities rather than a standalone “thing.”

I am not trying to pick on the standalone micro-messaging vendors here, and there are quite a few now with excellent functionality. Twitter works fine as a standalone tool out on the Web. How would you counter these comments to define the role of standalone tools inside the enterprise? The questions are about usage and not features. They are certainly not tool specific.

I do not want to compare tools here but rather approaches and I am open to the idea that there might even be a role for both in the same enterprise. I can see an integrated tool focusing on messages around projects and other tasks handled by the collaboration tool and the standalone tool handling more general conversations within an organization.

In fact, another comment raised some excellent issues with the integrated approach. I am glad to be more balanced here. There were even more comments but this is enough. It was a provocative topic.

Commenter 4: “As more and more vendors start implementing “Twitter-like” functionality, the more segmented and Tower of Babel-like the social landscape becomes. This is not so much of a problem with features that are bounded by the corporate firewall (such as office suites are and collaboration may be) or where interoperation standards have been accepted (such as email).

But it is a serious problem when you are talking about lightweight, highly social activities. Although it seems like a good idea to integrate it with your other communication functions, what if it gets integrated differently with two existing functions? What if email and collaboration both integrate microblogging? Unless you have a single vendor for all your apps, you are going to have a conflict. This problem is exacerbated by the expanding and fluid nature of people’s social environment nowadays.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under B2B, Business, Management, Networking, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog.