profile

The answer is no.

A friend of mine says software selection is only 10% of what makes a successful solution. I’ll agree if the software options all have a set of base features you need! I think the point is there is a lot more to a successful implementation than the underlying software platform (and I’m learning more every day).

Having a few years experience trying to implement Social Media tools in a big company I have a few thoughts on what those base features are.  This week I’ve been asked three times about Sharepoint, so I decided to blog my opinion.  I’m not trying to bash Sharepoint, it does Microsoft Office team collaboration quite well. The lists feature is very powerful and underused. You can build simple Intranet sites with it quickly. So, I’ll explore what I think a social platform should be, and note why I think Sharepoint doesn’t have the core features you’ll need.

Social software starts with the individual.  Your sales division isn’t a social entity, but the people in it are.  While an enterprise social software solution should recognize the reality of the organization (but maybe not focused on the corporate hierarchy) its focus must be the individual contributor. The data you capture should use tags, search, and personal networks to bring it all together.  One easy example is bookmarks.  Individuals add bookmarks to the system with a URL, description, and a set of tags.  Ideally, a user should be able to target that bookmark to an interest group, blog, etc.  People in that individual’s network should see the fact the bookmark was added.  Anyone can search by tag or description and find other relevant or recommended bookmarks. It’s more than adding a link to a site. Sharepoint allows you to add a URL to a site, that’s where it ends. Sharepoint doesn’t support tags without an add-on, and then the tags are only applied to certain parts of the site – not to bookmarks.  In Sharepoint the bookmark belongs to a site, and you can’t search all bookmarks, check for commonly used tags, or find trends.  It’s just a link on a page. So can you store bookmarks on Sharepoint? Sure. Is Sharepoint a suitable platform for social bookmarking? Not even close. There are some free add-on tools to let you build in some lists and web parts but is that what you want for an enterprise platform? The core features should be in the product, not a set of after thoughts.

How about Communities or Groups?  This is one place Sharepoint has some rich features.  Unfortunately it fails to weave the content together within a community, or provide a way to surface up content to a global level.  Content in a group should come in the form of blogs, bookmarks, forums, and more. When those things are all tagged you can navigate through the group easily.  Sharepoint doesn’t provide tags, or any easy way to search across many sites (I do hear some people have success with global search of textual content in 3.0).  How about show me all forum entries and bookmarks tagged with “coffee”? Sharepoint doesn’t support tagging or the navigation and search mechanisms for it. Social software systems for the enterprise must feature a great meta-data driven search or they won’t be useful. Features like blogs should be allow authorship from both groups and individuals.

Another core feature is system news or activity where you can see a log of what’s happening in the entire company or your personal network. Just having a colleague or friend list is very useful if you can’t use it to navigate relevant content in the system. In Sharepoint assumes what is relevant is what’s in the site you are viewing. It doesn’t allow you can’t get feeds of what’s new by artifact type, or by your “friend list”. While all system components should feed the activity stream, a user should be able to insert something into the stream with a status update.  This can contain a note or link to offsite material, etc.  Sharepoint has no notion of status updates or an architecture to support features feeding into a single repository the user can view.  if you use FaceBook this is the Home/Newsfeed.

A great platform needs to be accessible.  In the 90’s that meant some type of COM or CORBA interface. Later, middleware interfaces morphed into web services.  Today RESTful interfaces that only require simple HTTP interactions (like Atom/Atompub) allow for mashups and are what people expect.  While Sharepoint does expose a lot of the underlying data via a web services model (I’ve been told it’s extensive) you’ll have to write a lot of REST based wrappers to enable easy interaction.  Using feeds to get data is tough with Sharepoint.  I’ve found you get a basic feed, but the options to get content by age, ranking, etc is non-existent. Even a list’s feed may be useful (could be somewhat static) but Sharepoint seems to treat most feeds like “news” and only give you recent content. Don’t skimp on the API.

I could go on and talk about using crowd sourcing for idea and news and other features.  I’m sure there is an add-on for this or that, and Microsoft has some new tidbit in the latest release.  Do you want to build a social software system on top of a groupware solution? Why? Find a social sofware solution that is evolving with each release, don’t build something on a platform with none of the infrastructure or mentality you need.

Summary & Other features I’d look for:

• Groups of people can do the same things individuals can.  If a person can store bookmarks, or have a blog a group of people should have those features.
• Profiles must be extendible, tag centric, and support personal networks.
• Blogs should allow multiple authors.
• Everything should feed an activity log the user can filter by their network, tags, etc.
• Ratings & commenting should be pervasive features of any artifact.
• Rich notifications scheme that uses feeds and email.
• Don’t overlook crowd sourcing features.
• Pre-Built widgets that can be leveraged with simple JavaScript.

If you are looking for a platform check out Sparta Networks, IBM Lotus Connections, and Jive Software.  I use Lotus Connections and think the 2.5 version fits much of what I want in a platform. Don’t bother flaming me, it’s simply my experience and opinion.  If you don’t like it go find a blog that agrees with your thinking and enjoy it (and have a cup of coffee too).