Social Collaboration of the new age - Hours of fun and whoopee!

I`ll do whatever it takes not to be excessively pessimistic here – however come onn! How many of us truly look forward to meetings with our colleagues? There are so many personality differences which come into play. We've all seen dolphins and whales do it on discovery channel but do we as humans truly achieve more by working together? I know collaboration sounds like an incredible idea, but do we really want to do it face-to-face? In this present reality does it seriously work that much? Maybe it does. 

But meetings have to be done in the right mindset with proper collaboration, which is no piece of cake! What if we had an awesome online platform where teams could take action and sync up like never before? Yes, the awesome part is WITHOUT having to actually meet face-to-face! Social Media Based Collaboration enhances collaboration by allowing us to better facilitate communication among members of a team and also reduces the time, expense and of course all of the "frustration" associated with live meetings.

I figured out that a decent approach or a tool which effectively deals with the annoyance of working together by applying the Six Core Principles of Social Media Based Collaboration. An ideal social enterprise based collaboration needs to be participative, collective, transparent, independent, persistent and emergent as discussed in the lecture.

The best that I could immediately think of is Facebook. Facebook does abide by the six principles of social media based collaboration but hey – it definitely can't be all that simple. Firstly, it isn't professional. It would be somewhat odd if your boss was reaching you straightforwardly through Facebook and Twitter. We have email for that! Moreover you wouldn't want your employer to get a notice every time you play Farmville! Highlights a lot about you, maybe not so positively though.

Therefore after vast research I finally understood that these are not social enterprise tools but social networking tools. So one thing is clear. We are looking for a tool abiding by the six core principles just like Facebook does but something at a much more professional level. Salesforce Chatter comes in here (Salesforce.com, 2014). Salesforce Chatter, is an enterprise collaboration application akin to Facebook. Its not just closer to a Facebook for the enterprise but way better from a professional angle. For example, rather than bothersome third party applications pinging you with the most recent criminal your friend has thumped off, Chatter will alert you about business concerns that have changed. Chatter is the new Facebook for social enterprise (Idugboe, 2010).

Yet another social collaboration tool which is widely-acclaimed is Yammer which keeps on enhancing the control of tackling genuine business issues by giving a rich conversation layer to business data (Fidelman & Fidelman, 2010). This means that utilising their tool will definitely help place businesses on the ball and make them more focused.

If Chatter or Yammer might not be the best solution for your company, try flow or podio. Just be sure to choose the social "enterprise" 2.0 tool which best caters to your user requirements. The list is endless.

References

Fidelman, M., & Fidelman, M. (2010). Yammer - What You Need to Know - CloudAve. CloudAve. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.cloudave.com/451/yammer-what-you-need-to-know/

Idugboe, D. (2010). Salesforce Chatter - Facebook for the Enterprise? - Smedio - Business Ideas Worth Sharing. Smedio - Business Ideas Worth Sharing. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.smedio.com/salesforce-chatter-facebook-for-the-enterprise/

Salesforce.com,. (2014). Chatter - Enterprise Social Network & Collaboration Software Solution - Singapore & Asia Pacific - Salesforce.com. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from https://www.salesforce.com/ap/chatter/overview/