How Social Networks Bloom in the Enterprise
Council-member CIOs rely on employee word of mouth, user direction and new attitudes on control to drive Web. 2.0 momentum.
No matter how much we read about social networking, there is no way to know how solutions will or will not fit in your environment until you've gotten out there and used them. With Web 2.0, it's easy to do that. In addition, we plan to establish a task force to gather best practices from our people. We have found that some who have two Facebook accounts want to use pseudonyms for one, and we now need to decide whether—or under what circumstances—a pseudonym can be used for official firm communications. We're also looking at the possibilities demonstrated by a decision by one state's bar association to accept credits from a class taught in Second Life.
As CIOs, we all know there needs to be some level of control in a corporate environment, but these technologies are designed to thrive without central oversight. We must experience that to draw our own line without diminishing their benefit.
Meuser, Martin and Gieseman are each members of the CIO Executive Council, a global peer advisory service and professional association of more than 500 CIOs, founded by CIO magazine's publisher. To learn more visit council.cio.com.
