The Connections Blog

IBM is clearly spending a lot of time researching and developing ideas on social software and web2.0.  Developments such as Lotus Connections, Atlas, Beehive and Cattail are great evidence of that.  Bill Ives, well respected author at the FASTforward blog, takes a look at some of the output from this research:

IBM Research is looking at four main areas: understanding adoption, usage patterns, motivations, and impact. This position paper [Research on the Use of Social Software in the Workplace] gives a brief overview of the key findings from last two:  motivations and impact on the workplace. The found that within a company intranet's protected environment, employees choose to reach out on Beehive to new people rather than only connecting to those they know, which is different than behavior reported on Facebook. Now I have seen a lot of reaching out to new people who have connections to known people on Facebook but still, this is interesting. They also found that employees also share personal details that have not appeared with any significant frequency within IBM on other enterprise social software tools, such as intranet social bookmarking and blogging.

Looking further through in-depth interview they found three motivations: interacting with colleagues on a personal level, career advancement, and the ability to convince others to support ideas and projects. They wrote that, employees use Beehive to present themselves professionally and to network with those they believe can assist them in their career goals within IBM. Being part of large consulting organization in a past life, I can understand the internal marketplace dynamics that this system plays into.  Social media is often used for viral marketing in the external marketplaces so it is not surprising that people would make use of its capabilities in a large organization with an active marketplace for people, ideas, and projects.

The researchers also looked at impact. They found that the more intensely someone uses Beehive (as measured by more frequent visits and stronger associations with the online community) the higher their reported social capital, across all measures. In other words, they have closer bonds to their network, they have a greater willingness to contribute to the company, they have a greater interest in connecting globally, have greater access to new people, and a greater ability to access expertise.
[emphasis mine]

Fascinating stuff, and whilst not particularly surprising - the more you put in, the more you get out - the research does help to put pay to the ideas that time spent on social tools is wasted productivity.

A fascinating research paper, and interesting comment from Bill.