Enterprise Microblogs. A platform or a feature?

I’m very excited about the Enterprise 2.0 conference next week, and I’m particularly excited about the “Twitter-like tools for the Enterprise” panel that I am going to moderate. I have expressed thoughts in the past about the potential for these tools to prove value and success in the enterprise. I’m now somewhat confident that microblogging/activity sharing will find a place in the work environment of the future. But last year, I published this text:

Microblogs. The current darlings of media attention, microblogs appeal to both the egocentrism and the voyeurism of Web 2.0 aficionados. While few enterprise microblog solutions are more than a year old, microblogging enjoys significant buzz these days. Many blogging vendors, like Six Apart and Automattic, have already begun to incorporate microblogging support into their product sets. In all, Forrester expects enterprise microblogs to become a feature, not a standalone product category, though in either case, the technology is in its infancy.

Some took this to mean that I did not predict enterprise microblogging to be poised for success. After all, I pointed to the two negative psychological drivers that motivate Twitter use, the lack of technology maturity, and the incredibly high marketing-hype to proven-value ratio. All these are signs to be cautious about calling this a winning technology just yet. Consider that discussion forums and wikis are about 20 and 15 years old, and are still not used in many companies despite lots of evidence that they provide high value at low cost.

That finding was one of the more challenged parts of the report. So let me share some insight into how I arrived at it. The basic research methodology involved interviewing dozens of people from the vendors, clients, and consultant communities. Key findings were placed on a spreadsheet that compared it with known market growth patterns inferred from many other research projects. There are elements of the methodology that require judgment and subjective opinion. The opinions had to stand the scrutiny of many reviews.

Throughout much of the research process, microblogging was not included as a technology relevant to Enterprise 2.0. Our criteria stated that we were looking at Enterprise 2.0 – specifically the use of Web 2.0 tools within the enterprise, and at that time we did not encounter clients who used microblogging tools beyond early experimentation. During the course of the research project we spoke to some vendors, including Yammer, SocialCast, and Intridea to get a sense of their view of the marketplace, and we knew about experimentation into “verbose social-bookmarking tools” (which is one of the dominant ways that people use enterprise microblogging). But other than some beta testers, we could not find clients who expressed serious interest in the technology. We spoke to many E2.0 experts, and with the exception of a few (especially Laura Fitton), many were bearish on the prospects that Twitter was going to be interesting and useful in the public, let alone that any end-user would want a knock-off tool inspired by Twitter. And yet, that finding did not sit well with me. So I included the microblogging category and collected all the data I could to generate a credible finding.

At that time, Twitter was gaining some momentum of popularity. There were other players worth noting, like Jaiku, Plurk, 12seconds, and (now defunct) Pownce. Looking at the field now, we see that Twitter has emerged as the sole example of public microblogging success that is gaining significant traction (right?). It’s a shame actually, since some of the other microblogging platforms had developed clever ideas about adoption, user interface, and non-text based microsharing too. But what makes Twitter so interesting is the virtuous cycle created by a healthy eco-system of interesting value-added tools and the resulting growth in popularity.

Twitter itself is primitive. Yet it takes about three months for people get comfortable with it. Most people who have signed on to Twitter have since dropped off it. Most don’t upload a bio, most don’t follow that many people, are not followed by many, and rarely tweet. But those who stick around and leverage Twitter do so by relying upon the dozens of fantastic tools that make Twitter easier to use. Tools like TweetDeck to read tweets and group them. Tools like Topify, TweetGrader, Tweetbeep, Mr.Tweet, Twellow and so many more. Tools that help you find people to follow, manage your network, report on your usage, monitor your influence, etc. Twitter power-users use these tools, and gladly supply their Twitter usernames and passwords (yikes!) in this permissive world of leveraging free tools that make the experience better for Twitter users.

Enterprise microsharing does not enjoy the same virtuous cycle that Twitter does. Among the 20-30 options that enterprises now have – they don’t come with a comparable ecosystem of enterprise tools. And you cannot use the public tools in your private network (hey, if I’m mistaken, let me know). So the adoption pattern for an enterprise microsharing tool is much more complex. You have to really want to use these tools for them to work.

If you have never used Twitter, then you are highly unlikely to understand why you might want a Twitter-like tool in your company. And even if you do use Twitter (and still do after a few months), there are many other real adoption challenges that you will face when trying to bring a comparable tool into the enterprise. What this means to me is one of three reasonable predictions:

1. Enterprise microblogging never achieves its potential since buyers do not understand the value proposition.

2. Enterprise microblogging adoption is gated by Twitter adoption. As more people use Twitter, more people may use a twitter-clone in the workplace.

3. Microblogging-like activity sharing becomes a feature of enterprise tools, but not a stand alone tool itself.

I think #1 is a current reality for many businesses. #2 is a reality for those few businesses who understand Twitter but want something private. #3 is the path to success. I don’t see stand-alone microblogging platforms succeeding in the long term. And that is what I reported months ago.

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Tagged as: conference, Enterprise 2.0, microsharing, tool, Twitter, workplace