IBM To Offer Businesses Their Own Version Of MySpace

from the new-message-from-hotCEO1953 dept

Tue, Jan 23rd 2007 3:13am — Carlo Longino

A story yesterday said that IBM plans to get into social networking by offering companies software tools to let their employees set up sites akin to MySpace or Facebook pages. The emphasis on social networking seems to be for little more than PR value; perhaps in a sense what the company's doing is social networking, but really it's just offering companies a set of collaboration tools that can have as much value inside companies as they do for a teenager's social life. Many companies already have internal blogs, wikis and other systems, and offering them a way to build and manage these systems so they can more effectively allow employees to share information makes sense. While the trend to add social networking to everything is tossing up a lot of junk, social-networking tools could have some value for business when they're used not to enable dates and spread gossip, but rather to disseminate useful information.

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21 Comments

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Search Engines WEB, 23 Jan 2007 @ 3:22am

Lotus Connections
The name of the software is:
Lotus Connections
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Fred Fontane, 23 Jan 2007 @ 4:55am

Re: Lotus Connections
Thats not a comment, thats an advertisement.
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Frank Patrick, 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:01am

IBM is at it again
IBM is spreading it wings...again!
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TriZz, 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:03am

Surprise...
...is this what they've been advertising during the play-offs?

ibm.com/surprise

I just tried to go there, but there's nothing.

Hmmmm...
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JediN8 (profile), 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:24am

IBM is spreading it wings...again!
Well, according to Black Sabath, when Satan laughs, he spreads his wings.
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Andy, 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:30am

Something Similar
This is similar to what microsoft has coming in the new sharepoint server i think.

It seems to be the trend in monster (as in large) businesses.
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Unknowledgeable Geek, 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:37am

Re: IBM is spreading it wings...again!
Black Sabbath
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JediN8 (profile), 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:08am

Thanks for the spelling correction
Also, we have deployed sharepoint services at my company. I like it for the "wiki" functionality. I am going to try and convince people to use a "wiki" instead of word documents for documentation of processes and procedures in IT.
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Enrico Suarve, 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:10am

Nice idea - hope it works
Most large companies I know would possibly benefit from this but it does require quite a bit of discipline internally:

1) It requires a limited amount of free speech - OK calling the chairman an arsehole is probably going to be out of order but suggesting that the new company direction might not be the best one should not be career limiting

2) It requires empire building to be brought under control in a company - several companies I have witnessed over the past 5 years have multiple sharepoint servers, lotus notes thingies, unconnected boards etc. Usually this is down to different departments funding things and a lot is down to preserving the strength (information) of various departments within a company

3) It requires a strong design policy - I have seen several such networking tools where the original design was either weak or not maintained strongly enough in the face of management pressure so lost it. When this happens usually the navigation goes to hell, people can't find things or find hundreds of copies and utilisation quickly drops off

Failure to ensure any of these (and probably a few others) usually renders it quickly unused and dead

The technology alone is not enough - its almost as if a new post of 'social networking manager' (or some other inane title) is required
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Mike, 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:12am

MySpace for the office? OfficeSpace?
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Mike, 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:13am

MySpace for the office? OfficeSpace?
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Yo ho ho..., 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:41am

About time...
... I've always wondered what the AP manager on the 3rd floor looked like!

Time for more office flirting and dating!

...and of course a new tool for sexual harrasment lawsuits!
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jan 2007 @ 6:56am

Re: Re: Lotus Connections
if its 'lotus' as in 'lotus notes' its not an advert, its condemnation.
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Tyshaun, 23 Jan 2007 @ 7:33am

Re: Re: Re: Lotus Connections
if its 'lotus' as in 'lotus notes' its not an advert, its condemnation.

Amen brother! Lotus notes is such a badly designed program. Very powerful in some ways, but not very intuitive. The only program I've ever seen that is worse is Rational Clearcase (I believe Rational is owned by IBM). Anyway, what a pig of a CM tool.
At any rate, MySpace for the office sounds cool. I work in a company that geographically disburse and at the very least it would be nice to know what the folks I conference call with every week look like (or maybe not?).
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jan 2007 @ 7:34am

Doesn't LinkedIn already offer this? Why is it new and exiciting just because IBM said they are doing it too.
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Buzz, 23 Jan 2007 @ 9:22am

OfficeSpace FTW
I like Mike's idea. He should copyright that. OfficeSpace!
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Notes Guru, 23 Jan 2007 @ 10:33am

Lotus Notes
Amen brother! Lotus notes is such a badly designed program. Very powerful in some ways, but not very intuitive.
Clearly you have bad Notes Admins or Notes Developers working for your company.

Notes rules the roost with regards to rapid development, deployment, knowledge management CRM, CMS and all the other corporate acronyms you can think of.

FYI:
Sharepoint was created because M$ had nothing that could compete with IBM knowledge management tool sets. IE: Notes.

It still doesn't. IMHO, our web templates are FAR more superior than M$SharePoint out of the box templates.

More than likely, this "IBMspace" uses the Lotus Websphere system and not just Notes.

Implementing a "Yearbook" to see all company employee's faces along w/ email header (name date, time and office #) has been pretty standard practice in the default Mail templates w/ Notes for well over a decade (with my company at least)
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Yoda, 23 Jan 2007 @ 11:21am

Good for the economy, I guess
I work in a small geographically dispersed company and we use Yahoo IM to stay in touch. You can put your photo up so people can see what you look like, or use an avatar if you don't. It's free, and it works. So much of what larger corporations do seems pointless when such cheap, easy solutions are available.

Disclaimer: No relationship to Yahoo whatsoever, other than a user of YIM.
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Glen Moriarty, 23 Jan 2007 @ 12:25pm

Scholar360
We have been doing corporate elearning for a year or so at www.scholar360.com. I think Enrico is right that it cannot just be about connecting/socializing. It has to be woven through the fabric of the organization and provide real solutions to real problems -- otherwise it won't catch on. For some tips on how social networking can help businesses, check out: http://scholar360.com/corporate_elearning.php.
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reza, 23 Jan 2007 @ 5:17pm

Dear Friends, A group of researchers at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are investigating effects of Weblogs on “Social Interactions” and “Trust”. Therefore, they have designed an online survey. By participating in this survey you will help researches in “Management Information Systems” and “Sociology”. You must be at least 18 years old to participate in this survey. It will take 5 to 12 minutes of your valuable time. Your participation is greatly appreciated. You’ll find the survey at the following link. http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=616499
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Sramana Mitra, 26 Jan 2007 @ 2:56pm

My prediction: every one of the big enterprise players - IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle - will have a collaboration suite that has an integrated environment including community tools like what IBM has just announced, as well as web conferencing, project management, project portals, and various other computer-telephony related functionality.
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