Comments on: Corporate Facebook – should you use Facebook or a Facebook-type system?

By: Jon Mell

Jon Mell — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:47:00 +0000

Thanks Yonni, love your focus on adoption and fundamentally believe this will be the key to this technology’s success.

I’m interested in your point about “endless use cases”. Do you find this is sometimes a barrier in terms of positioning? We have found that once you actually start to provide a specific use case people can tangiably grasp something at otherwise can be quite an abstract concept. This ends up being far more powerful than “you can use it for everything!”

By: Yonni Harif

Yonni Harif — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:54:00 +0000

Hi Jon,

Thanks for writing about us. I've enjoyed your exchange with Emanuele, who is one of the most passionate people I know in this space.

Just to add some thoughts on adoption and business value to what you and Dvir mentioned -

1. The underlying principle behind WorkLight products, including WorkBook, is that employees are already using these consumer services at work, yet not securely. By implementing a WorkLight solution behind the firewall, companies can foster collaboration using the same services that employees use at home. This results in much higher adoption rates, which is critical to any Web 2.0 service.

2. By leveraging a popular tool such as Facebook for work, the company gains business value not only by the enhanced collaboration, but also by letting employees complete business tasks securely through WorkBook/Facebook. The use cases are endless - approving purchase requisitions, time reporting, document exchange, etc. These have a real impact on companies' bottom line.

By: Jon Mell

Jon Mell — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:24:00 +0000

Thanks Emanuele – the licensing costs aren’t too bad for Connections, it’s the infrastructure costs that inhibits SMB adoption. Microsoft do this a lot better than IBM. We use Intermedia who offer hosted Exchange for under $8 per user per month, with options to add Sharepoint and OCS for similar prices. I don’t see anyone offering the hosted IBM collaboration suite in a manner that is so easy to buy and set up, but it would be incredibly powerful if you could sign up with a credit card for Domino/Sametime/Connections for $24/user/month and be up and running in 5 minutes!

By: Emanuele

Emanuele — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Hi Jon,
I think you are right: the context makes the difference and I completely agree that the real Facebook experience is too extreme to the average knowledge worker.

On the Workbook side I must say that the experience and especially the apps you get in Workbook are not the same you have in Facebook. You can easily have a taxi or a room reservation app running on your data that is keept secure (so the information is not stored publicly). This means that the basic working is Facebook-like, the real experience is more tailored.

I love Lotus Connections. I started loving it when Dogear, Fringe Contacts, etc were made available and they're for sure more oriented to the enterprise. I don't know (no pun intended)if the price tag (and infrastructure) could be accessible to every single startup.

By: Jon Mell

Jon Mell — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:27:00 +0000

Thanks Dvir – am already connected with Gia but hadn’t seen that PC World article!

Jon

By: Dvir Reznik

Dvir Reznik — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:17:00 +0000

Hey Jon,

Your bottom line is the punch line of it all: similar functions, different purpose. And even thou this Facebook app (haven’t heard about it till now) makes your network ‘private’, the information is still stored publicly. And people are looking for similar functions, not necessarily with FB.

The GUI needs to be similar like you say, and very intuitive – add connection/friend with 1-click. The new Facebook sidebar ‘people you may know’ is a) excellent!! why FB waited till now?, and b) easy to use – no need to navigate away from your homepage.

With regards to Enterprise 2.0, there are two links worth sharing, that represent E2.0 adoption:
Gia Lyons: http://tinyurl.com/62yadg and
PC World: http://tinyurl.com/6zgpye