Social Software – something old is new again

I have to say that this crusty old collaboration software geek was unimpressed with my first look at the "new" Social Software offerings. Wikis? Having worked with Lotus Notes and Domino for years and years I just couldn’t see anything new there.

I’ll even admit that Blogs didn’t really look that special the first time around. They reminded me of the first MS FrontPage templates I looked at way back in 1994. Remember those? They had four or five menu items along the top, usually titled “About Me”, “About this Site”, “My Photos”, “My Links, “ “My favorite Music”. Sound Familiar?

To someone who has been working with Lotus Notes Discussion databases, advanced collaboration software applications and Knowledge Management technologies for more than a decade, these new kids on the block looked like they had a lot of growing up to do before anyone would take them seriously.

The real differences here are twofold:

1) The universal acceptance of the interface and the ideas behind them

2) The way that people are attracted to and share information in these “new” mediums

RSS is the real technology here. RSS is universally accessible to everyone, and the buy-in from all the top bloggers and blog-tool vendors seals the deal. Without that, you’d have the circa-1994 FrontPage Templates.

Comments posting and sharing ideas is the next big app advancement, where people can have a discussion without installing special software, and where everyone can see the discussions and add their own information and ideas.

I found this posting on Socialtext’s Web site very interesting. Here’s an excerpt:

How do you get users to accept the new methodologies and paradigms?

-Don't tell users there are new methodologies and paradigms, they don't care or need to know.
-Show them that the new systems allow them to get their work done
-Show them that you can fix problems that prevent them from getting their work done going forward

By allowing people to participate in spaces from their email client, change of behavior isn't as much of an issue, so you can focus your time on new opportunities. Especially when users are brought into a space that is as simple to use as email, yet powerful enough for them to build their own solutions and applications.

What I found interesting is that I used to show almost the same slide and give the same talk in 1999 and 2000, when I gave presentations on Knowledge management systems using Lotus Notes and Domino. Unlike Bob, I’m not sure that Knowledge Management was a failure – tell that to the attendees of KMWorld’s conference every year – but rather I think complementary technologies were absorbed into current KM-friendly business processes and ceased to be thought of as a separate thing.

As a consultant I have participated in several KM and collaboration software projects, and seen a number of successes and failures. The failures were almost all a result of non-adoption – the users were given no incentives to contribute, and the projects and tools withered away. The successes were almost all a result of implementing supporting technologies in a climate where these technologies helped users get their job done. The clients were already “doing” KM or collaboration as part of their daily business processes, and our systems just helped them facilitate and formalize the processes.

These are the same trends that I see shaping Blogs and Wikis now. Once KM and collaboration software was absorbed into daily life, the distinct KM and collaboration software and GroupWare labels were dropped – The ideas and processes behind them became part of that daily life. The same thing is happening with Blogs and Wikis; they are being introduced surreptitiously into organizations that already have an accepting climate, facilitating processes that already exist.