Private Social Networks for Internal Communications

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I know what you’re thinking.  Private social networks for internal communications are stupid.  

Be open.  Right?

But there are plenty of situations where internal social networks actually makes a heck of a lot of sense.

Think about it.  

Today, we use activity streams on social networks for marketing, sales and customer service.  

But there’s nothing private about Facebook, and if you could social network with your coworkers and business partners privately, you could do more with less.

But how do businesses social network privately?

How do you get your own private Facebook?

In his keynote at Dell’s B2B Social Media Huddle in London last month, Brian Solis said that he never shares information that gives him a competitive edge.  

So what do you do if you want to use activity streams for collaborating with your coworkers and share proprietary information?  Email is great for person to person communications, but it’s a lousy collaboration tool.  

Is there a safe way to build your own, private social network?  

Google Wave was an early (now defunct) attempt at private social networking, but it was before its time.

Salesforce.com introduced Chatter, its exclusive social networking service as an extension of its SaaS CRM platform.  It made its private social networking service free.

To listeners of this podcast, it will come as no surprise that access to a safe activity stream in a private social network behind a firewall can bring new efficiencies and added productivity to the workplace.

In this epsiode Robin Daniels, (@robin_daniels) VP of Product Marketing, Chatter talks about…

• The results of their latest customer survey
  • 28% fewer meetings
  • 32% less email
  • 50% said they could find information faster
• Why Google aborted Wave
• The Salesforce Chatter Community Etiquette Guide
• Overcoming internal adoption challenges
• How Chatter protects customers against hackers
• How Chatter compares to SharePoint
• Seesmic integration for easier engagement and an open question to Loic LeMeur
• Chatter’s biggest weakness

This episode on private social networking advances a previous conversation we had with Chris Messina of Google on activity streams. If you’re interested in this topic, the episode with Chris is a must listen.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash