October 6th, 2008
IBM and social networking
Some time ago I had a long talk with an IBM’er about social networking.
He said the first key to bringing social networking to business was a simple directory.
We should all have our own page somewhere, whether as individuals, as members of a hierarchy, or as business entities. We need to be found, and have our expertise known. Then we need to use that directory to network with others.
That’s a key idea behind Bluehouse, the service IBM launched in beta today.
One of the keys to positioning any social networking effort is your analogy. IBM’s analogy is the business meeting.
A business meeting is a play in three acts. Act I happens before the meeting. Act II happens during the meeting. Act III happens after the meeting. Bluehouse is an attempt to link those three acts in a continuing business relationship.
It all takes place online, through a SaaS infrastructure, and whether the underlying software runs under Linux is not that important. But this is how, in an open source world, you get back to proprietary profit and lock-in.
Once you commit to using Bluehouse, and you can be committed through a business partner, you’re in with IBM Lotus Foundations and working in its cloud.
You can either try to create your own Bluehouse cloud and bring your business partners into it, or be brought into someone else’s cloud. Either way you’re quickly building pages in the directory about your company and your people.
All of which leads to something I have been saying for many years, but which the journalism profession has been studiously ignoring.
That is, any journalism enterprise exists to organize and advocate an industry, a community or lifestyle. Most get the advocacy part. None has yet figured out the directory bit.
Could you build a newspaper with Bluehouse?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
