I read with interest Chris Koch’s blog post yesterday, “Web 2.0: a Community in Denial.” Chris is a longtime writer/editor at CIO Magazine. You can read his thoughts yourself, but his basic argument is social networks are not delivering any real benefits to businesses or business users. I brought attention to Chris’s post in one of the communities I belong to: The Social Media Club. Some of the community members commented on Chris’s post, but what I found so ironic is the very act of discussing and evaluating his post in a community is proof of social media in action. There is even value in understanding Chris’s ignorance of the value of social networking. I belong to a few communities and wholly credit my relationships– mostly digital– with tremendous strides in my understanding of this sector and new opportunities for my business. I’ve seen first-hand proof of companies who are implementing web 2.0 solutions for their businesses reaping the value in enhanced collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
It’s what a few of the enterprise 2.0 evangelists have been saying for a long time: it’s not about the technology or the platform, it’s about the people and the relationships. In the new era of Enterprise 2.0, social networks are delivering a new metric– I’m calling it “Relationship Equity.” Depending on how you behave and contribute to a community, you accumulate relationship equity points. These points can be stock-piled or traded for strategic gains opportunistically.
In other words, the 60 million+ of us who are blogging and joining communities to share our experiences and insights are all part of a new generation of social crusaders. We’re an army of “get-its.” It concerns me that an IT voice such as CIO magazine would proliferate such a negative spin on the benefits of web 2.0 (ironically though a blog), but not too much. The numbers are in our favor.
Thanks for the Post Susan I posted the same message below under Chris’s comments on Social networking.
I for one have been doing a lot of research over the past several months on Social / community networks and have looked at several companies that offer this so called
service. Most of these companies are missing one key ingredient that is needed for social networking into the Business community and that is having the data structured. If you look at Myspace Youtube etc.. the data that is collected is unstructured, meaning disorganized, unreliable and unmanageable. I have looked at sites such as abc news, be seen be heard http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/BeSeenBeHeard/ and thought it was pretty cool that you were able to share video and make comments on stories etc… At the bottom of that page I came across a company called Neighborhood America it seems these guys have a perfect fit for this space
I totally agree Susan…there is a company out there called VisiblePath that uses the term ‘relationship capital’ instead of ‘relationship equity’…but it is getting at the same thing…their business claims to provide ‘relationship capital management’
Adam
I believe Chris Koch’s article is referring to “tangible value”, as in monetary, that is sustainable. He’s not talking about the value added by people communicating and/or expressing themselves.
I think the reason the discussion of web 2.0 gets very emotional is because, it is an “emotional” topic in the the sense that it’s about people feeling as though they have a voice. They probably always had a voice but the lack of anonymity prior to web 2.0 kept them from expressing themselves in other forums.
Web 2.0 is a very romantic and “real” idea, the idea that people are forming communities, have a voice and will never be alone again. The idea that we as humans, the one’s that have electricity and a computer, and the one’s that aren’t in places such as Darfur and Iraq have actually found Utopia. With all the attention placed on Darfur and Iraq by celebrities and blogs, no one can stop what is going on in those areas. The point is how are the millions of people typing along in blogs changing anything. This post I’m submitting won’t change anything either. So why am I writing this? Because it’s therapeutic. This is why I say the web 2.0 debate is about emotions, it’s about human psychology. The need to matter, the need to make a difference, the need to be heard.