Companies are becoming aware of the continued success of Web 2.0 services such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter and discover these tools to improve communication with their customers. In the enterprise context the term Enterprise 2.0 has established for the current change itself, this is not only for the use of Web 2.0 tools to communicate externally, but also for internal use within the enterprise. As an example for this is to break old communication patterns and structures, as well as a simplified information access for better information and knowledge sharing. The potential is beyond rigid hierarchies and inflexible processes.

A possible answer to these challenges are Enterprise Microblogging solutions, such as Communote, for open communication about topics and projects. However, verifiably benefits and the Return on Investment (RoI) of the so-called Social Software such as Enterprise Microblogging is still missing. In cooperation with the TU Chemnitz and the Communardo Software GmbH a convergence to the solution is made within a thesis by Alrik Degenkolb.

In this blog post about the current state and approaches of the thesis, a model has already been presented, which can assist in the calculation of the RoI and showing the success factors of Enterprise Microblogging.

Help us with the identification of particularly valuable applications of Enterprise Microblogging and make a contribution to a first approximation of the Return on Investment. By participating in the survey, you help to make the value of Enterprise Microblogging visible.

[https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQNSYC7]

The answers are carefully evaluated and after the completion of the survey the results of the thesis and of the survey will be published on the Communote blog.

We look forward to your active participation and feedback to the survey.

Recently, a number of new publications on the topic of Enterprise Microblogging have appeared that we would like to share with you. Two interesting papers deal particularly with the analysis of the different genres of using Microblogging.

It can be clearly demonstrated that the use of Web 2.0 tools, such as Microblogging, in the corporate context is very different from Twitter. As the Twitter study 2009 by Pearanalytics shows, there is for example no spam and ‘pointless babble’ in the company. Instead of that, status updates (from meetings, telephone conferences, current tasks), task coordination, questions and answers as well as discussions and providing information of interest (“I found an interesting study”, etc.) dominate here.

It is also amazing that experienced corporate microblogger may distribute a variety of tasks and information to different audiences with just one note. This shows impressively how productive Microblogging is applied in the company (e.g. at Communardo and a variety of Communote customers).

The results of  these studies are available online and can be submitted as papers at international conferences:

Enterprise Microblogging: Procrastination or productive use? In: Proceedings 16th Americas Conference on Information Systems. Lima, Peru.

Tweet Inside: Microblogging in a Corporate Context. In: Proceedings 23rd Bled eConference. eTrust: Implications for the Individual, Enterprises and Society. Bled, Slovenia.

Discuss & discover is a new event for the European B2B sector from 20th till 22nd of October in Munich, Germany. It is a mix of an exhibition, a conference, a public forum, corporate events, social events and online elements and an international meeting place for everyone who deals with IT at the professional level . The main focus lies on Enterprise 2.0 Solutions.

Communote Enterprise Microblogging will present new Features, a new Frontend and interesting integration possibilities.

You’ll find us at the pavilion for Mobility&Collaboration Hall B0, Booth 305/E.

Looking forward to your visit.
Please make an appointment at jens.osthues@communardo.de.

Our development team used the last weeks to implement a number of feature requests and some great enhancements. The three highlights are the new auto-save function, the IP range filter and the integration to the wiki tool Confluence:

Auto-Save Functionality

There is no character limitation in Communote and so even longer information snippets can be managed there. For example many users write short meeting protocols right into their project microblog. Especially for such use cases the new auto-save functionality was designed. It makes sure that problems with your internet connection or a problem with the browser does not lead to a loss of important information: the text is saved in the background and is restored automatically.

IP Range Filter

Using this new functionality you can restrict access to your Communote to certain IP ranges. With the IP range filter you can control your company’s information flow even better.

Confluence Integration

While Communote hosts the dynamic flow of information, wikis are very good in the joint creation and editing of documents. Our new Confluence plugin connects both worlds: you can show and create Communote postings right into Confluence wiki pages. An example use case is a project wiki with wiki sites for every sub-project (for static information like team members and tasks) including current micro-postings from Communote.

Other new functionality

• automatic database updates
• extended API
• blocking of accounts after the wrong password
• Favicon
• Various bug fixes

The new features have been made available with the new Version 1.0.1.

Microblogging is a great tool for knowledge-intensive work environments. This is the case for academic research and education. One of our customers, the chair for Management Information Systems of Chemnitz University, was featured with a posting about educational microblogging on the well-known Touchbase-Blog last week.

The research group will attend the Educamp in Ilmenau (Germany) at the weekend and discuss innovative concepts for education. This is a great chance to discuss microblogging with them and get the latest news on their microblogging experiences.