Social networks are known from Facebook which have made the term share popular. Billion of users are using social networks each day, but they can't define the difference between a social network and a blogging software. It has to do with posting links in the share more vs. not using any links.
Let us try to abstract as much as possible. A normal blogging / wiki tool has the aim to create content. In most cases this is done with the markdown syntax and the edits are stored in a version history. Most users doesn't like such interaction with a wiki because it takes many hours until an article is created. It has nothing to do with socializing and sharing but it's the opposite. Creating new content is something which has to be alone and by ignoring the team.
Now it's time to describe the opposite. It has to do with the term “sharing a link”. What does that mean? The difference is, that the user has to invest less or no amount of work but the workflow is perceived as interesting and group-oriented. A typical post in a social wiki has the following format:
URL check this out, it's great.
Such a post is a a share post, because it is send to the group with the advice to click on the link, observe what is written there and give a feedback. Let us describe what will happen, if the process is repeated quite often. The resulting entries in the social wiki will read the following way:
URL cool.
URL photos of cats
I'm not sure what which song is better URL1 or URL2?
URL the last meeting was boring. See the person on the right of the JPEG.
and so on.
What the users are doing is not to create content, but they are sharing content which is already available. The difference between a reference and sharing is, that sharing is the advice to the group to click on the link and get feedback from the group back. Creating a lot of “URL only posts” is equal to a social intranet. An social intranet expert is putting not one or two links to the messageboard, but hundred of them and then he forwards the comments to a different group to reach a larger audience.
We can simplify the idea of a social intranet with a simple rule: post a link! This simple rule explains what the users should do and as a result the group interaction gets better.
What modern social network platforms like Confluence Wiki, Facebook and other are doing is to build an infrastructure which makes the action “post a link” as comfortable as possible. For example at facebook it's possible that the layout engine will display the link before it is clicked, and the layout engine is also to identify images and show them in a preview window. These extra features are great, but a social intranet can work in a textmode also very well.
The difference between a complicated content wiki and a group oriented social wiki is that in the social wiki only links are posted. The links are referencing to content stored somewhere else and the idea is to judge about the content. If this behavior is combined with certain topics like jokes, funny pictures of the day and food the social wiki will become a game by it's own and will produce a lot of traffic. The corpus of all posted URLs forms an environment in which the content is played back, similar to what a DJ is doing behind the turntable. The idea is that the group has fun and can relax.
The funny aspect is, that many software products are available which can be used as social intranet. A normal mediawiki software works great, but the confuence wiki, the yammer software, sharepoint and many other programs can do the same job. Tho core features of all these tools is, that the user can post a link. The first thing what the user has to do after he has logged in is to figure out where he can post a link and then he has to press the submit button. It depends on the software and the configuration which other person see the link too.
Content wiki vs social wiki
It's important to know the weakness of each system. Content wiki have the property, that they become boring and updated by single persons. That means the user are not talking to each other but they are writing a new article for the wiki. Their reputation is measured how high the quality of the content is. The problem is, that such a behavior is not very open to the group. Normal users will stay away from the wiki because they are not intersted in creating content especially not in the markdown syntax.
A social wiki has the opposite property. A social wiki has the tendency, that the users are posting URLs and do it very frequently. The reason is, that posting 10 URLs to images located in the Internet can be done fast and it's a lot of fun to get the feedback from other users. The problem of such behavior is, that in most cases, it has nothing to do with work, but the users have fun all the time. A good idea is, to keep both wikis separate. The reason is, that a certain user behavior is restricted by the admin and the admin can only follow the rulres of a content wiki or a social wiki.
In a social wiki the admin is not allow to ban a user because he has posted 10 URLs to funny images. If he is doing so, he hasn't understood what a social intranet is. While in a content wiki he has to ban such users because the idea is to create new content and not have fun with the group.
Building a social newspaper
The literature describe since the year 2010 so called social intranets. The idea is that companies had introduced Facebook like website in their internal communication. The problem with this technology is, that most authors can't define what a social intranet is. In most cases it is described from a technical perspective based on e-mail, wikis, blogs and other options to publish something. The good news is, that social intranet can be described more focused on their core functionality. No matter which underlying content management system was used a social intranet is equal to post a link to a messageboard. A typical example is a e-mail with the following content:
“URL, read this!”
Sometimes such a communication behavior is described as microblogging. The problem is that the term blog doesn't fit very well. A link can be posted in an e-mail, to a wiki or into a forum. What the message is really about, is that the author doesn't have created something by it's own, but he acts as a discjockey. His invested work has to do with creating a playlist. This can be a single URL, a list of three URL or an URL plus a comment.
If this posting behavior is done frequently and by larger amount of users it will result into creative dynamics which can't be controlled. It's possible to escalate link sharing into a formalized newspaper. That means, a group is working together to select and comment the links of day into an aggregated news headline.
A non professional social intranet means, that a single user is posting a link to a wiki. A professional social intranet contains a news room in which more than one person is courating the playlist and sends it to a larger audience. The surprising fact is, that a newspaper doesn't create the content, but it is working as a discjockey. They are creating the playlist. That means they decide which URLs is a good one and which not. The result of a ongoing newspaper meeting is not text in which something is written down, but a curated playlist of 10 URLs of the days plus the title.
Professional newspapers are not created by a single user but by a group with a diverse background. If in the social intranet such a newspaper is visible, that company has installed a professional social intranet with a gatekeeper function. Such a group has a large influence in the company and is able to manipulate the opinion in any direction.
Let us describe a more harmless version of a social intranet. Suppose the employees in the company didn't have understood what a social intranet is. They have access to a wiki but they are using it not for sharing links but for creating content. User1 invests his worktime for writing an article about a new product. The wiki-article contains of 30kb text and a table. Also the article is referencing to some books which give more detail information. The user is publishing the article in the intranet-wiki. Such a content production doesn't effects anything. The article is available, but nobody will read it. It is not a news but the opposite. It has more to do with a showcase. That means, the user put his knowledge into the wiki. Perhaps he hopes, that the company will profit from it. Such a publshing behavior is uncritical because the employee doesn't manipulate the opinion nor he is able to reach a larger audience.
The escalation of a social intranet
The low entry point in social medias within a company is the users are sending e-mails with textlinks back and forth. The receiver clicks on the links, finds the photo interesting and posts the link to the other department which is asked for feedback too.
Step #2 in the escalation ladder is, if the employees have figured out, that they can post URLs into the wiki. The advantage is, that all users can see the links and the amount of e-mails will get lower. The URL to a photo is now available in the mediawiki installation and it is possible to monitor the behaviors of the users. This is called a social wiki.
Step #3 and the largest escalation in social media in the company is, if the link posts are aggregated to a grassroots newspaper. The head of the newsroom is curating the links of the day into a compiled newsletter and puts this to the wiki. Such a daily news link list is mandatory. That means all the employees have to click on the URLs and are asked for feedback.
The most interesting point in the described escalated social intranet is, that at no point content was created. Socializing doesn't mean to create a photo and edit it with photoshop. It doesn't mean to write an academic paper. Social intranet mean, to play the social role of a DJ who creates a playlist and plays back the content to a larger audience.
Market overview
There are many technical tools available for introducing social networks within a company. The amount of features within wikis, blogs and collaboration is huge. The problem it's unclear how to use these software in reality. To understand how a social intranet is working we have go a step back and describe a normal intranet without a social component.
According to the term intranet is is based on well known TCP/IP connections over cat5 Twisted pair and WLAN connections. The needed underlying software is a Linux server and some endpoints for the other to get access to all the data. After the initial setup an intranet is empty, that means no files are hosted on the FTP server, no content is available in the blogs and the users haven't created PDF files in their home directory. After a while the users will start to produce content. They will write a letter, they will upload photos to the intranet and somebody else will create a product catalog as a pdf document. A common misconception is to describe these content generation action as a social intranet. But it's a normal intranet without a social component.
Now comes the important step. How can these newly created information be used as a database by the users? The first important step which is done by the IT department is to install a fullblown fulltext search engine which is indexing all the content in the intranet. This is a technical advanced task because the amount of data is huge. If the search engine well it will look the same like Google but only for the cooperate intranet. With a fulltext search it is possible to enter a term into the box, e.g. “product catalog” and the result page will display the URL to the pdf file.
In the next step the intranet can be extended with a social network. The main purpose of a social intranet is to increase the traffic. That means, the people will search for content and they will download the content which is already there. The measurable amount of transmitted data in a social intranet is higher. That means, the same file is requested more often. The question is how can this goal be realized? The answer was given in the chapters before. What the users have to do is to post URLs. They can post the URL into an e-mail, to the wiki, into the chat, into the forum and so on. The most advanced way of creating a social intranet is to establish a company internal newspaper. This newspaper doesn't need newly written articles, but it is a collection of URLs to existing content stored on the server.
It is important to know, that there is a huge difference between content creation in a normal intranet and posting URLs in social intranet. The difference is that posting URLs results into a human-to-human communication. While creating a new file and put it on the server won't produce any communication.
I would like to explain it on a small example. In a normal intranet, there are 100 users. Each of them has created some files. The files are stored in the network directory so that anybody can read it. From a technical point of view, the content was created and it can be retrieved. The small problem is, that it's not done. Why should user1 download a file from user 50? There is no reason for communication. This deficit can be overcome with posting links to a pubic wiki. If user1 puts the URL to the paper of user#50 to the wiki it is for sure, that user #50 will recognize it, and then he will first browse through the content of user1 which is unknown to him and perhaps asks back why his document was mentioned in the wiki. As a result lots of file-request are send over the intranet and the users are starting to communicate back and forth.
In terminilogy of the blogosphere the behavior of posting links and posting comments is called “socialize”. The idea is, that first the users are creating content by it's own, and then the content is aggregated to something more powerful.
The underlying technology for creating a social intranet contains of a fulltext search engine which allows the initial discovery of content plus the ability to post a link to a wiki. We can describe the roles in offline terms. The first thing what a user can do is to compose a song, and the second thing to do is to play the role of DJ which is playing the song for a larger audience. Social intranet is equal to play the DJ role.