"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." (William Gibson)
And so it is with organisations and brands as they experiment with social media how best to operate in the (increasingly) connected era.
I was reminded of this by the recent announcement from Salesforce.com introducing Salesforce Chatter - sort of Facebook for the enterprise or enterprise collaboration meets social networking. The reasoning is that while social networks have provided consumers with a new way to gain insights into what's happening in the world, enterprise collaboration is almost non-existent because content, apps and people are disconnected and not part of the same conversation.
Now even if you take away the usual hype that software vendors usually carry on with - this is a clever offering and one that will evolve further - because it is based on demonstrated behaviour (people are already chattering!) rather than a second guess by a software engineer. It is also a platform - intended to enable the 200,000 Force.com developers to build custom social apps with Salesforce Chatter - see, I've already bought the hype!
However, chatter is just that, chatter, unless it has context. And that is the interesting challenge that Salesforce.com has promised to address when it releases the product in Q2 2010. Employees will be able to import their profiles from sites like Facebook and form groups around topics like winning a particular deal. And bring conversations into the organisation by associating them with specific deals, accounts or groups with the use of hashtags.
As Charlene Li says, "Chatter enables presence within Salesforce. This means you'll be able to see my update "working on a presentation for #Ford" not only on my profile page, but also in the context of the Ford deal. So my salesperson will see that information on the Ford account as an update, even if s/he's not actively following me . This is about putting the conversations and social objects in the context of where they will be most useful."
Of course, it is not only Salesforce.com that is addressing a more "social organisation" - Lithium, for example. being another player who is meeting this challenge.
These sorts of platforms - with the ability to integrate social media and make it relevant in an enterprise environment - combined with those organisations that are already experimenting and learning in this environment, will be a powerful combination. The future is indeed already here for those that are ready.
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