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/

Blogging can be Catchy - The Mashable way!

Blogs are about telling stories that draw peoples attention, and can turn out to be a source of inspiration for people reading it. The point is, that there is always an interest for some sort of news which is being published somewhere, and with the power of blogs, there are in numerous opportunities for people to provide a new service be it for marketing or just helpful tips. When there are lots of bloggers successfully commenting and participating in each others conversations, there is a definite purpose that has been formed for that blog.

Like what we have learnt in the lecture, the principles for blogging can help naive bloggers to get the basics of blogging right. Once they religiously start to relate to the six affordances principles to blogging, they will realise that they are getting to understand how it all works. Later on, when a person gets addicted to blogging, he/she will start to use more mature means to gain audience for their blog.

For me to create useful posts, i would talk about stories that excite me as well as the audience. Once I get the attention of any audience, I would start highlighting the purpose of the blog so that the main story is gaining recognition. Once that is done, the social media can be made use of by providing the option to share my blogs and inviting a huge crowd source to comment on my blog.

An excellent blog according to me is 'Mashable' which provides news about digital innovation and media (Taylor, 2014). Again this blog is attracting visitors due to the type of news it's providing which is very catchy as well as exciting to it's readers. Like I have mentioned above, Mashable too had the advantage of being an early adopter in an industry which was drawing a lot attention (Mail Online, 2012). 

Ultimately, I feel that blogging doesn't have to introduce your exceptional grammar skills, but more about connecting with your audience in a useful way. What's more, to keep up a healthy blogging spirit with other bloggers, you ought to take reasonable interest in their blogs as well as share their posts, and treat any comments as a positive, constructive and useful feedback.

References

Mail Online,. (2012). Social technology blog Mashable to sell to CNN for 'more than $200M'. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2114261/Mashable-sell-CNN-200M.html

Taylor, M. (2014). How Six Blogs Increased Their Traffic to Millions of Visitors. Venture   Harbour. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from https://www.ventureharbour.com/6-popular-blogs-grew-millions-visitors-less-2-years/

Welcome to my blog!

Hi guys!

My name is Faizan Valangar and I'm going to be blogging about all things related to technology and enterprise 2.0.

I'm pretty new to blogging and super excited to find this opportunity to communicate with you all. So thanks for reading my posts and don't hesitate to leave your comments!

Cheers!