MySpace & Company Intranets
August 23rd, 2007 by KierstenI have often thought that Google would have a brilliant side business helping companies make their intranets more searchable. They could help organize all of the miscellaneous stuff that ends up on a company intranet, making it a much more useful tool for employees, and even directly deliver Internet content to the Intranet site.
The same could be said for MySpace. I’ve seen a number of company Intranets, and some take a stab at trying to help employees get to “know” each other online, but think about how powerful it would be if each company had it’s own MySpace on their Intranet. Colleagues could get to know each other better (helping with cross-department or cross-office collaboration), managers would have a better understanding of the small communities that are so helpful (and could be potentially harmful) in a company, and companies could even hold online brainstorms and idea sharing this way.
Perhaps Google and MySpace already do this for employee communications departments, but I suspect that they don’t … it’s a shame because both tools could be extremely powerful for motivating and understanding employees — especially those who grew up on such search engines and social sites.
August 26th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Hello everybody,
Kiersten is opening a very important discussion. What is going on with the big Net for internal organizational communication? I love that GCI has a very technological focus in communication strategies. GCI offers its clients different online alternatives for PR. This discussion is about the same thing, but focused on INTERNAL communication.
It is very interesting how we have seen theoretical development in org-comm during history, focused on how we can create stronger communication networks among organizational members (because it’s not only about ‘employees’). Intranets give us this opportunity in the simplest way EVER. It is a big opportunity we cannot leave aside today. We live in a world in which people LIVE online most of the time. We establish relationships on the Web for all kind of purposes. We work with people we have never seen, because we only ‘chat’ with them. We are used to establish friendship networks online, whether we know all those friends or not: Hi5, MySpace, Facebook, etcetera.
What would happen if, instead of blocking net-access to those popular websites, we encouraged people to use them? What if, as Kiersten says, we open this kind of websites for organizational members, so they can have their profile, store their music, photos, videos, etcetera? We could even make them feel more in-their-space, while working at the organization.
The importance of human relationships on the Internet is no longer something to be underestimated. It’s an opportunity for organizations. Not a threat, as many companies still think they lose money because employees get distracted by using MSN messenger.
Jorge Espinosa
www.evjorge.com
MEXICO
October 8th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Well, it seems that we’re not the only people who think this is a terrific idea. Last week’s edition of Business Week (”The Water Cooler is Now on the Web” — October 1, 2007) covers this trend and notes that many mainstream companies are already creating social networking sites for their employees (and prospective employees). And, it seems that there is a bonus — for some companies, it cuts down on emails since people are able to collaborate online rather than sending emails back and forth.