Social Text 3.0

Social Text 3.0

Picking up on Jerry's Blog on Social Text 3.0

After hearing (and seeing) Alan's presentation on Social Text 3.0 I was surprised at how few of the features we are really taking advantage of. I am also skeptical of the usage of some of these by features by outside corporations. In his blog post, Jerry brings up some limitations of the People Feature. One question that was raised in class that I also take issue with is the idea of "following" people. The way ST appears to work, colleagues can "follow" each other without asking for permission, the idea being that everyone works for the same company and should have an open working relationship. In reality, I think this could get sticky - what if someone from an entirely different area of the company starts following someone else - does the company then need to set protocols around who can follow whom? In small companies this may make sense, but in larger more specialized firms, questions could be raised as to whether it is "necessary" for someone to follow someone else and see what they are working on.

In addition, I agree with Jerry that ST seems to be missing an important feature of social networking - the "instant messaging" type of communication that can be invaluable in a corporate setting. When I was consulting at GE, their in-house IM tool was a critical and highly accepted way for getting business done across the organization. If a company is using ST as a central repository for its business functions and content, it only makes sense that the tool provide the real-time benefits of networking and information sharing. For our class purposes, I think this feature would actually be useful, for mundane things such as coordinating snacks, to asking questions of each other when completing the NML assignments. The other advanced features don't seem as applicable - for now I would rather be "friends" with my classmates on facebook that "follow" then on Socialtext, but maybe that's just me being old-fashioned.