Well, OK, maybe yours isn’t. But it has become very clear to me that many of the success stories you read about social projects in companies use the word “success” very generously.
I’ve come across two examples of this recently. I won’t name names because it wouldn’t be fair, and because I don’t believe that this phenomena is limited to these two examples.
Example 1:
A 6,000 user network which apparently reflects the 90/9/1 “Participation Inequality” effect described by Jakob Nielsen.
If 90% of the contribution to your network comes from 1% of the members, that’s not social. That’s just broadcasting. It’s not social just because you can reply and contribute, it’s only social when people actually do reply and contribute.
Example 2:
An organisation of 110,000 employees, 20,000 of whom are members of the network. 50 of these users (0.025%) are very active; another 300 (1.5%) are regular users who feel like if they have missed something if they don’t log in every couple of weeks.
Every couple of weeks??? I feel like I’ve missed things if I don’t log into BroadVision Connect (my company’s internal implementation of our Clearvale product) every couple of hours! A system that even the top 2% of users don’t feel they need to access more than every couple of weeks is not exactly business-critical - it’s a toy.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it’s great that more and more companies are exploring the use of social networks for their employees. And I know that these are big companies, and cultural change at big companies takes a long time. But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that these networks are successful when they remain the preserve of a tiny proportion of company employees.
I had always felt that BroadVision Connect had a bit of a “participation inequality” problem, and this prompted me to go and work out exactly how unequal our participation really was. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the findings - in October 2011, 90% of activity in our network was performed by 40% of the members. Yes, there is inequality within that 90%, and yes, we have around 33% “lurkers” (to borrow Jakob Nielsen’s phrase). But overall, I think our stats are quite good.
Our own employee social network has become essential to communication within the company. The true test of how well social networking has been embraced by a company is whether, if you turned it off, would the company still function anything like as efficiently? If the answer is “yes”, then your social network is still just a toy.