Collaborative Thinking

Activity Streams: Moving Beyond Event Aggregation

When it comes to 2011 trends, I posted earlier on "Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site to Platform Services". Rather than publish a short list, I wanted to take some time to explore each trend in more depth. In this post, I want to examine the topic of Activity Streams.

Trend: Activity streams will continue to be a much hyped capability within social platforms. However resulting “stream glut”, interoperability, and security-related issues will threaten benefits unless better user experience design, filtering, standardization, permission models, and back-end analytics are applied. 

Level of insight: Inconvenient truth beneath the hype. Note: As a disclaimer, I am a huge fan of activity streams and the work being accomplished by those involved in the activitystrea.ms effort. I'm also optimistic that the effort can be aligned and integrated into OpenSocial.

Detail:  The concept overall is compelling – activity streams allow applications to publish events that are captured by aggregators that serialize the items into a sequence of posts (listed in reverse chronological order, newest entry first). Often items include options for people to “like”, comment, or react to the item in some manner (rating). Aggregating events into a common stream enables people to easily subscribe (“follow”) a collective set of events from one or more publishers. There are many examples of “stream-based” platforms in the consumer market (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) although FriendFeed is often cited as the reason for a standardized approach. FriendFeed harvests information from a variety of sources (music, photos, status messages), forcing the company to develop/maintain custom integrations for many different publishers and slowing down the ability to add new publishers. A common integration framework based on standard interfaces and formats would enable solution scalability and allow publishers to be added more quickly. The enterprise faces the same situation. Benefits to subscribers (or to the organization at large) include greater productivity, better collaboration, and improved situational awareness. Situational awareness also includes the ability for subscribers to “self-synchronize” with the people or systems they are following based on information signaled to them in the stream. Activity streams can also mediate social networking and community building.

Activity streams also have an interesting intersect with identity. Depending on how someone sets up publishing of their own personal activity stream, the meta data shared about themselves creates a sense of presence enabling others to be aware of their actions. (Note: In fact I have often talked about activity streams representing the next generation of the “presence” capability we associated with enterprise Instant Messaging systems.) A person’s activity stream can contain meta data about their thoughts (via status messages), travel, documents, tasks, participation in social network sites, or contributions to communities. A steady stream of this information observed over time can create a type of peripheral awareness (or ambient intimacy) for those “following” that individual. That type of insight to someone’s actions also provides a means for organizations to move beyond the type of declarative identity we see on a person’s profiles within a social network site (e.g., hobbies, interests, skills, expertise). Activity streams can:

• Reinforce the claims made on a profile by showing that competency being performed
• Amplify the strength and currency of those claims by showing how those competencies are being performed (and possibly attested to by others)
• Add additional identity insight by showing attributes not contained on the profile at all

Potential benefits however are not just accrued by people-centric activity streams. Applications of all types can also generate activities into a stream to keep people aware of system events (e.g., a new sales win, an urgent alert of some sort). As the enterprise considers how activity streams can be leveraged, we see interest in role-based streams and process-related streams. The idea is that we can improve both productivity and collaboration needs by making events more visible and allowing people to take action more effectively (sometimes collectively) based on that level of event transparency (especially when compared to how people rely on their e-mail inbox for much of this type of group notification and work coordination).

Implications: However, the level of irrational exuberance in the market regarding activity streams deserves a pragmatic examination:

As more people and applications create events published into a common stream, the resulting volume and velocity by which events “stream by” can cause people to miss something relevant. Of course, you can “follow” people and applications but the more you follow, the closer you move to the original state of too much information flowing by. People end up spending a fair about of time scrolling up and down searching for things they might have missed. Depending on the way activities are aggregated, there may be limits as to how much information is actually kept around to enable historical review. You might be limited to events over a small time period, or just to a certain number of entries. The main point is that activity streams can become just as messy and burdensome as an inbox. 

The answer some will argue is better filtering – a more advanced way to organize and view an activity stream. By creating virtualized views, or specific streams, we can reduce the “noise” and enable people to watch the activities that are most relevant to them. This is an accurate assessment and a very valid need. However not many solutions that I’ve seen offer enough options in this area. Additionally, simply adding filters solves only part of the problem; the user experience needs to also improve the way that activity streams are delivered and can be acted upon by people – the activity stream event should not be seen as an end-point but as a social object that can be further manipulated (e.g., tags), curated (e.g., people may want to bookmark or “save” an event for later reference), or shared (e.g. a notification to a colleague that creates a collaborative action). 

Activity streams will also need to respect the permission models associated with the event being signaled from a publisher. How those security aspects are applied and coordinated with the source system is another area where I do not see enough work being done in the market. There are benefits to sharing sensitive information to people in authorized roles via activity streams as long as policies are enforced. Since items in a stream are likely to also become “social objects” (further manipulated by subscribers as described earlier), it is important to consider the needs for activity streams to be monitored and archived (e.g., for compliance reasons).

There is also the possibility that activity streams will be collected in some type of store within the system aggregating events from various publishers. This scenario reinforces the need for security coordination with source system since the data within the activity stream item might need to have access controls similar to those of the “system of record”. A centralized event store does offer benefits. While much of the current discussion on the value of activity streams focuses on its “immediacy”, there is a latent opportunity for back-end analytics to run against the store to offer more retrospective analysis. This type of business intelligence functionality can correlate activity stream items over time to infer patterns, make recommendations, or signal interesting situations. In many ways, there is a complex event processing aspect to activity streams that also needs to be explored more fully. 

Below are some key points to consider:

• Initial activity stream efforts by solution providers often aggregate events only within their own platform and likely based on their own APIs
• Efforts to aggregate events from external systems may be done via proprietary APIs by vendors seeking to leverage its own existing API ecosystem
• Publishers (unless systems delivered by the same activity stream aggregator) will likely support those internal APIs initially
• Specialized vendors will leverage the lack of interoperability and standards support by larger platform vendors to provide an "overlay" model that aggregates activities from multiple sources
• Pressure to support standardization will come from customers wanting to avoid activity stream silos
• Activity stream solution providers who see interoperability and standardization as a competitive advantage will support activitystre.ms and OpenSocial aggressively

If there is a key take-away from this post, it’s that everything mentioned above reinforces the need for interoperability and standardization. Without both, there will be isolated aggregators embedded within multiple enterprise platforms (portals, collaboration, social) with no effective way for organizations to federate events across these activity stream silos. Source systems, or activity stream aggregators or IT staff, will have to write to multiple proprietary APIs to publish events into each silo. Strategists will have to resort to specialized solutions that act as an “overlay” to different enterprise platforms that are competing on the idea of being the single activity stream solution. Without an architected approach, solutions will not scale and become unmanageable as additional publishers create an unsustainable integration overhead to maintain.

Social Network Sites As Connective Infrastructure

One of the more interesting articles I came across while on winter break was the dissertation abstract and presentation below on the role social network sites play as people adapt to different life transitions. The idea of "connectivity infrastructure" I thought was very relevant and influenced some of the points I made in an earlier post "Enterprise 2.0: A Transition From Destination Site To Platform Services". However, the organizational value is the more compelling aspect re: how these sites mediate the type of interactions and relationships necessary to master new roles and identities. For instance, within the enterprise, one of the more common value propositions of these type of sites is that they help onboard new employees - connecting them to experts, mentors, peers, and communities. When I've talked to folks in HR, the quicker companies can get their new hires connected into the fabric of the company, the more confident they are that the new employee will see how they fit into the organization, possible career paths, ways to get involved in various communities, etc. 

The topic of "transitions" and its influence on identity is interesting and perhaps not always an area of focus within the E2.0 community. Yet employees go through work-related transitions all the time: joining a new team, beginning a new project, starting a new role, preparing for an event, playing the role of a mentor for the first time, etc. Some of the transitions an employee incurs are formal and visible (and may have official support mechanisms) but some are informal and invisible (with no support, leaving the employee "on their own").  Do these types of sites help augment the personal networks of employees in ways that enables them to handle these transitions more effectively? It makes me wonder whether organizations that do a great job at handling this type of employee "adaptation to transition" process are those that also perform better in some measurable way or are thought to have healthy cultures. 

Title: Networked Information Behavior in Life Transition

Abstract : This study explores the supportive and informational uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition.  This study focuses on the transition to college, a major life event requiring integration into new settings, the negotiation of informational challenges, and the mastery of new roles and identities.  Adaptation to transition is a complex process contingent upon the management of stress associated with transition and general integration into the transitional environment.

Social network sites represent a connective infrastructure within personal networks. Because social network sites are inherently connective, they afford a location for provision and receipt of social support during transition, and a site for the acquisition of information necessary for integration into the transitional environment.  Drawing on data collected directly from a social network site that describes the networked activity of a freshman class over the course of their first semester at college, from a sample survey of freshmen with 1,198 respondents, and from 15 semi-structured interviews, this research has two primary components. 

In the first component of analysis, Fred explores the structure and dynamics of socio-technical networks during transition.  Using exponential random graph modeling, he identifies the role and magnitude of preference, socio-demographic, and configuration factors in structuring socio-technical networks during transition.  He then uses an econometric framework to demonstrate that certain types of information sharing and profile change are associated with socio-technical network growth. 

In the second component of analysis, he explores uses of social network sites that facilitate adaptation to transition.   Using multiple regression and structural equation modeling, he demonstrates that supportive and social-informational uses of social network sites in transition exert a direct and mediated positive effect on overall adaptation. He then draws on interviews to explore supportive and informational uses of the social network site during transition, finding that social network sites are useful in pre-transition preparation, for social adaptation, and for academic support throughout the transition.  Upon evaluation, he demonstrates that a social network site is a useful place to turn for the social and informational support that facilitates adaptation to transition.

Fred Stutzman's Dissertation Defense

Fred Stutzman Dissertation Defense (Slideshare)

View more presentations from Fred Stutzman.

 

Screencast: Employee Profiles & Social Network Sites

I recorded a short (11 minute) screencast this morning to help a customer better understand the role of employee profiles within social network sites. The key point (in general, somewhat simplified) is that employee identity evolves across four phases: formal (ascribed to the employee by the enterprise), claimed (where the employee creates a persona), performed (people knowingly/unknowingly act out their identities) and reciprocated (people's participation and interactions establishes a reputation and community equity feedback loop to what is performed, claimed, and ascribed). 

Screencast: Employee Profiles & Social Network Sites

When organizations discuss the business value of social networking, online communities, or expertise location, the conversation invariably includes a discussion on the role of employee profiles. In this screencast, Senior Technical Solution Manager Mike Gotta discusses the evolution of employee identity within the enterprise.

Posted to Cisco Enterprise Social Software Community. For additional information, refer to blog post: Don't Think Profile, Think Identity

 

Connected By Default

Social network site providers continue to make social data more public and visible to third-parties.

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

Commentary by Kurt Opsahl

Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook's privacy policy once promised, "No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings."

How times have changed.

Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Privacy & Social Network Sites: A Case Of Conflicting Agendas

Earlier this year, Facebook's Zuckerberg said that the age of privacy is over. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, LinkedIn's Hoffman echoed that sentiment (view the video below) - musing that privacy was an issue of "old people" and that younger people are not so concerned over privacy. Many will disagree that privacy is a concern only to certain demographics and many will also disagree that people have to cede privacy simply to leverage social networking. It borders on the absurd and demonstrates either a lack of knowledge about a complicated challenge - or reveals the dilemma operators of social network sites face in terms of a credible business model. In this case, I believe it's both. LinkedIn and Facebook simply do not seem to understand the social dynamics around privacy and compound the problem by implementing technology in a way that exacerbates the privacy challenge (perhaps more so in the case of Facebook).

In order to establish sustainable business models, operators of social network sites will continue to change terms of service and other policies to forcefully encourage people to become uncomfortably public. Twitter perhaps has avoided some of these issues because there are few controls over how people share information Twitter begins the relationship with its members in a more transparent manner - that "everything is on the public timeline". However, Facebook long ago set expectations by offering members a more complete set of controls for people to share information on a perceived limited basis. So when executives from consumer social network sites talk about privacy, I react to whatever they say with a health dose of skepticism. It is self-serving in fact for social network site execs to go on stage and diminish the value of privacy when they benefit by its very erosion (to the dismay of members).

The risks and rewards of sharing information online | John Gapper's Business Blog | FT.com

It can be hard to find an actual disagreement at Davos, given the social effects of sticking a lot of people in workshops and asking them to flesh out the future of the world convivially.

So it was encouraging (for a journalist) to come across a clear and important divide in the first session I attended this morning, on internet social networks.

The topic was privacy, a contentious one for social networks such as Facebook (represented in the session by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of its founder). Facebook’s recent changes to its privacy settings to open up more content to the public caused a backlash.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, the professional social network, told the session that “all of the concerns about privacy tend to be old people issues.” Young people generally put mobile phone numbers on social networks because “the value of being connected and transparent is so high.”

The risks and rewards of sharing information online | John Gapper's Business Blog | FT.com 

  Key Video From The World Economic Forum’s Social Networking Powerhouse Panel

Year-End Thoughts On Social Media, Social Networking & Social Analytics

Previous posts:

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software (Part 3)

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software (Part 2)

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software

While a lot of my research agenda and client interactions focused on collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 / social software during 2009, the most sizeable amount of time and energy for me this year was spent on social media, social networking, and social analytics (externally as well as internally).

Social Media

Earlier this year, there was a noticeable spike in my inquiry load concerning social media. What I found interesting was that the nature of the calls were not driven by a marketing context but by concerns regarding risks (e.g., identity, security, compliance, reputation) and technology-related concerns regarding integration points between consumer sites and the enterprise (e.g., Facebook Connect). The trend of social media as a "hot topic" continued throughout 2009 resulting in several speaking engagements (often with Alice Wang, a co-worker of mine in our consulting organization who focuses on identity, risk, and security topics):

• Concordia Workshop: Use Cases Driving Identity in Enterprise 2.0: The Consumerization of IT (Slide Deck And Background Information Here)
• OASIS: Identity Management 2009 Transparent Government: Risks, Rewards and Repercussions (Session Description Here)
• Burton Group Telebriefing: Leveraging Relationships and Managing Identity – Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin (clients only) 
• Enterprise 2.0 conference San Francisco: Social Networking and Identity - A Cautionary Tale

There is a lot of coverage out there on social media - but surprisingly, not so much that drills down from the softer brand/marketing/customer relationship management strategies into the underlying enabling technology. As social media becomes more complex, with a lot more issues related to interoperability, integration, platforms, standards (formal or vendor-specific), etc., IT organizations are slowly becoming more involved with social media strategies as business strategists begin to see social media as being co-owned across multiple business units. As organizations think more broadly about how enterprise systems work in conjunction with consumer services, those issues began to come into my inquiry load.

I expect this trend to continue and trend upwards in 2010. The business implications are becoming more strategic as organizations such as the FINRA, FDA, etc. establish guidelines for how organizations treat social media from a regulatory perspective. For instance, I just finished reading the FINRA report on "communications with the public" that came out in September 2009 (proposed new rules).  More will come in 2010 (FINRA - Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites, FDA-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools).

The issues raised from regulatory activities really does take social media beyond the marketing-centric focus popular in the media and by various pundits. Although social media is one of those meme that has become over-hyped to some extent, it still represents a credible term. That said, I did try to pull some thoughts together to clarify my own thinking on social computing and social media, including a visual taxonomy of sorts for social computing and a working definition (somewhat verbose) for social media.

• One Way To Look At Social Computing
• Defining Social Media

And the framework defined back in 2008 when I started to look at social media for formally is still holding up:

• "ACES" Framework For Social Media (from 2008)

Social Networking

Social networking was overall, my hottest topic in 2009. The field research project I undertook in late 2008 resulted in a series of reports published throughout 2009 on the findings. A summary of the project is available for free here (registration required I believe) Field Research Study: Social Networking Within the Enterprise. One of the most interesting trends in this space I believe is the intersect between social networking, identity, and analytics covered in these posts: 

• Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin 
• Part 2 - Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin

The more I study identity (in-and-of-itself, not so much "identity management"), it leads me back to social sciences and how social structures form, how relations are shaped, structural holes in networks, etc. Research available from people like White, Kollock, Granovetter, Wellman, boyd, Smith, Cross, and a few others took up most of my spare reading time. Identity & Control, How Social Formations Emerge (White) was my favorite book for 2009. I also thought very highly of the work done by Henry Jenkins on media literacies and participatory culture.

While social networking has a lot of positive aspects when it comes to community-building, expertise location, and so on, it remains poorly understood. I find people jumping to tools too quickly and become overly enamored with terms like "broker", "connector", "maven", etc. Also, it seems that there is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to strong ties / weak / latent ties. Still, there was a lot of client interactions on topics related to profiles, social graphs, activity streams, and social networking in general. For some, social networking trends are providing a spark to re-ignite KM efforts. I don't disagree - I've always felt that KM efforts were also too focused on tools and too focused on "capture" versus relationships and interactions. Expertise location remains a loaded term - often it's more about finding someone who has experience (not necessarily *the* expert) or someone with shared activities (past/current) so that a conversation can ensue. That can be tremendously important - but the capability can sometimes be oversold. However, there is a dark side. Social media and social networking intersect with risk management topics in many instances. Those combined risks (summarized briefly below) represented the hottest topic the second half of the year.

Identity

• Assuring profiles (identities) – internal and external
• Populating profiles with trusted enterprise data
• Assessing social identity attribute claims
• Making sure that controls exist to satisfy privacy mandates

Security

• Applying policy-based management (including enforcement)
• Inclusion of monitoring, discovery, and audit mechanisms
• Validating "fine-grained” access controls and role modeling capabilities
• Satisfying compliance, discovery and related data-retention controls
• Ensuring data loss protection

Profiles And Profiling

• Credibility of profile and social claims
• Possible bias against employees by co-workers based on race, diversity, affiliation information made open and transparent via social media tools

Information Security

• Intellectual property, compliance, e-Discovery, monitoring…
• Aggregation / correlation capabilities
• Data management and data integration (profiles, roles, etc)

Privacy

• Adherence to regulatory statutes, level of relationship controls, possible stalking situations (hostile workplace)

Social Network Analysis

• Makes relationships visible that perhaps should not (“connecting the dots”)
• May lead to “befriend / defraud” situations, social engineering

From a technology perspective, this post summarized my thoughts on the shift in focus from destination sites to a more distributed/federated model: Social Networking Platform Evolution: From Destination Site To Networked Services.

Social Analytics

Social analytics (including social network analysis, SNA) remained an emerging topic based on my client interactions. Social analytics encompasses a wide variety of methods (e.g., sentiment analysis, SNA, reputation analysis, etc). Some tools/vendors focus on analyzing communication patterns (e.g., e-mail), while others correlate patterns across communication and information sources. The ability to aggregate and correlate social data is becoming a highly prized competency - not just from an external social media perspective but increasingly, from an internal viewpoint as well. The posts below summarize some of my thinking during 2009 on the topic: 

• Community Equity, SunSpace, FOAF+SSL, & KiWi
• Social Analytics: Another Front For Business Intelligence
• Community Equity Project

There are a lot of players in this space - although the domain is pretty fragmented. Xobni and Gist focus on e-mail. SAP Business Objects Social Network Analyzer is leveraged by Jive. At its heart is a "relationship analysis server". People within Sun are working on Community Equity (an open source project). You can follow Community Equity here on Twitter. Vendors like Catelas, Trampoline Systems, Value Networks, Contact Networks, and eTelemetry have all made efforts to deliver social networking analysis tools (with different approaches and areas of emphasis). SAS is in the space focused on fraud detection. Telligent has also included an analytics capability within its platform. Marc Smith, formerly Microsoft Research and Telligent, now on his own (you can follow him on Twitter) has an interesting tool called NodelXL based on Excel. IBM has an application (Atlas) that provides SNA capabilities for Lotus Connections (it also has consulting services in this area as well). So perhaps 2009 is the year that social analytics took cohesive shape as a defined "space" but the exact market boundaries are yet to be determined given the amount of fragmentation right now. However, I expect social analytics to become much more prominent of a topic during 2010 as organizations seek ROI from social media and social networking / Enterprise 2.0 initiatives and also look to better understand some of the relationship patterns within social networks.

Sharepoint 2010 and Claims-Based Identity

Note: update just to clarify wording: The inclusion of claims-based identity within SP2010 is one of the more strategic advances organizations should monitor and evaluate as the beta moves towards general release. Improving how SharePoint handles identity is one of the most strategic areas for SharePoint 2010 to improve on over how identity is handled in MOSS 2007 (from a social computing perspective):

Sharepoint 2010 and Claims-Based Identity

Posted By: Vittorio Bertocci | Today @ 12:50 AM | 55 Views | 0 Comments

When it comes to identity management intensive applications, it's hard to top Sharepoint. Whether you are signing in a portal, accessing a document or using a webpart for reaching out to external web services, your identity is going to be the factor that drives it all.
Vittorio went to visit Venky Veeraraghavan, Program Manager Lead in the Sharepoint team, to discuss how Sharepoint deals with identity challenges. Venky gives a fantastic explanation of how claims-based identity and Windows Identity Foundation helped the Sharepoint team to deliver on the identity functionalities they needed without getting entangled in low level details such as protocol handling.

Sharepoint 2010 and Claims-Based Identity | The Id Element | Channel 9

Aggregating And Correlating Facets Of Social Identities

The summary from eMarketer ("Job Candidates Both Hurt and Helped by Social Networks"), is worth reading (click on the citation link below) - the full article has additional stats/charts.

Blurring the line between professional and private

Most social network users have heard of the consequences of having an unprofessional profile page, and know potential employers might look them up online.

A summer 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com found that 45% of US human resources professionals used social networks to research job candidates at least occasionally.

Respondents were most likely to use search engines such as Yahoo! or Google to check out job candidates online (41%), followed by Facebook (29%) and LinkedIn (26%).

The findings were more likely to get candidates rejected than hired: 35% of HR professionals said social networking content had caused them to eliminate a candidate, while only 18% reported deciding to employ someone based on a profile.

Job Candidates Both Hurt and Helped by Social Networks - eMarketer

Identity And Enterprise 2.0

It's been a while since I've had time to blog so apologies for the disappearance but between workload, conferences, travel, and vacation - my work queue has been pretty backed-up. Hopefully I will get back to a more regular routine. For now - I've included the presentation Alice Wang and I delivered at the Concordia Workshop. Alice and I have been exploring this intersection between identity and social media / social networking for a few months now. Identity and security aspects of social media and social networking has become the most active research area I have right now - including topics such as brand monitoring and reputation. Social media inquiries have dominated by inquiry load since May - primarily driven by interest in Twitter and how to leverage that particular environment in a manner that satisfies risk concerns (especially for regulated enterprises). I'll post more on this particular trend later.

These two links help provide background context to the Slideshare deck:

• Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin

• Part 2 - Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin

Bg Concordia Socnet Identity Final

View more presentations from Mike Gotta.

Part 2 - Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin

Part 1 is here. Part 2 provides an additional example.

Use Case Scenarios

The following archetypes help illustrate dynamics involving identity within social structures.

Structured Task Worker

Mary is an opinionated call center agent for a large insurance company. Her role is strictly prescribed by her job description. As a call center agent, her job is to handle in-bound calls, assist customers, and escalate issues as necessary. With several years experience across call centers in different companies (spanning health care, traditional insurance, as well as annuity and pensions), she has a very low call-to-escalation ratio and receives high marks from post-call surveys. While Mary is a senior staff resource, management in the customer service area does not considered her to be one of its “star” agents. In addition, call center agents are not considered knowledge workers by the organization. In some ways, she has reached the end of her current career path in terms of pay and promotional opportunities. However, given current economics and her companies deteriorating competitive position in the market, there is little she can do to “be noticed” by management.

Mary finds out that her area (as well as others in marketing and product development), are part of a “Corporate Facebook” pilot. Mary creates a profile where she adds information to describe herself beyond what resides in corporate directories and contact applications. Her profile notes her prior job experience (including supervisory roles) in call centers at other companies. While HR and her manager had that background information already, it is the first time many of her co-workers are aware of her background. Mary proactively creates her area’s first community space to come up with best practices for reducing escalation calls. She uses a wiki to achieve that goal and establishes herself as one of the more active wiki “gardeners” (maintaining wiki content).

Mary also joins communities outside her own customer service area. In particular, she joins a marketing community and a product development community. In the marketing community, her feedback in a discussion forum is constantly discounted or ignored. However, in the product development community the reaction is very different. Her front-line stories captured and shared via internal podcasts and YouTube-like video clips help that group brainstorm on ways for them to improve current coverage features while brainstorming about products that leverage synergies across different insurance products. Several lead product developers end up following Mary’s blog that she sets up to capture information from her call center activities. Part of the learnings published on Mary’s blog provide insight on the marketing characteristics of products people are commenting on during call center calls.

Product strategists following her blog posts tag those pages and bookmark them to be shared on the Corporate Facebook site. Members of the marketing team who had previously discounted Mary’s insights in the discussion forum discover these tags since they follow the product strategists closely. Over time, Mary finds a change in tone to her discussion forum comments over time as she gains credibility in the eyes of the marketing team. This "change in heart" is due in part to her her blog (discovered by the marketing team through tags and social bookmarks), but primarily, the inferred endorsement of her insight by the product developers persuades the marketing team to view Mary differently - beyond her call center role.

Mary is now discussing future job openings in both marketing and product development groups.

Social Roles & Social Identities:

Clearly, the “structured task worker” use case scenario is contrived to suit our purpose but it is not entirely unimaginable and contains several interesting social dynamics that illustrate points raised in Part 1 of Relationships and Identity: Two Sides of the Social Networking Coin.

• Mary is considered “opinionated” by peers but that perception is altered once co-workers have access to information that provides her social footing in terms of credibility and expertise (i.e., she has worked at different companies in call centers and at times had a supervisory position).
• Mary takes on a social role (i.e., wiki gardener) in a departmental wiki. Her edits are often the last ones made during debates on completeness and accuracy of wiki content. Mary’s work behind the scenes with other editors has created a community-like atmosphere among other “gardeners”. Performing this "social role" elevates Mary in ways not possible in her formal role and work activity. It also provides Mary with peer reinforcement of her reputation regarding her expertise.
• When Mary attempts to join a marketing community (via a discussion forum), her efforts to establish her social footing are rebuked. Marketing does not consider customer service and call center agents as having any type of standing when it comes to marketing-related discussions.
• When Mary attempts to join a product development community however, her efforts are more welcome. Product development teams often have formal processes defined between the two groups to solicit feedback and to handle escalation issues related to product tickets.
• Mary’s ultimate acceptance by Marketing was due to her ties with product development. Those ties strengthened her reputation beyond what she had achieved within customer service.
• Mary may not be considered a “star” by her own management, but after establishing a more visible social identity, she is “followed” by key decision-makers in product development and (eventually), marketing.
• Establishing social identity facets across different groups created options for Mary to move into other areas of the company. These opportunities might not have happened through formal channels associated with her institutional role as a call center agent. Even if those doors did open up, at the very least, discussions with management in those other areas would have been more challenging given a limited view of her talent and knowledge.
• Social tools and applications enabled a more participatory culture in this use case scenario where she could define herself outside her institutional role.

Potential Blocking Points

Not all organizations implement social tools and applications in an open manner. In this scenario (contrived as it is), Mary might not have been permitted to join communities outside her own department:

• Many times, an organization’s “need to know” (NTK) policies prevent employees from participating in areas outside their formal role and departmental membership.
• Some organizations are also leery of employee blogs.
  • This is a consistent finding when I ask customers about employee blogs are concerns over social etiquette, hostile workplace, leakage of confidential information, or disclosure of intellectual property.
• Similar concerns are sometimes expressed when it comes to wikis.
• Privacy constraints can also come into play. If this had been a scenario where Mary resided in a country with strong privacy regulations, some of her previous work history that was inserted into her social network site profile by the system might have been disallowed.
  • Absence of this information would have hindered Mary gaining social footing within her own team regarding her expertise (based on her industry experience).
• The result – identity management and security controls can maintain structural holes in social networks by artificially blocking participation and contributions by employees across barriers that the enterprise has erected.
  • These barriers may be completely valid and required for the organization to effectively management risk – but there are derivative impacts to social networks resulting from those practices.