Figure1: Maps of the Internet.
This map represents the location of every single class C network
on the Internet and shows how everything is connected.
Introduction
Social tools are booming nowadays. Even if it was, at the very beginning, restricted to innovative students and Web evangelist it is now gaining the business world.
In this paper we explain the power of social networks and we look over their multitude why and how they are growing. We bring out the possible use in enterprise to optimize communication, collaboration, corporation and connection.
Today, the big buzz on the Internet and in lots of conversations is social networks or the activity of networking socially. Even if these activities of being social are old as the world is, the development of online tools has been exploding for the past few years and is “transforming our life, work and world”.
It is very obvious that activities on the Web are constantly growing and social networking is at its nuclear stage with more innovation being introduced. First used by students for their private life, social platforms; Facebook and MySpace are now great places to connect, communicate, market artists, products and companies as well as share information worldwide.
As the new generation is entering in the workplace, the demand of social tools is also growing in companies. Employees want new tools to be more effective and more connected with their colleagues, clients and partners.
But how-to synchronize the use of social networking between very different worlds?
Compared to student life, an enterprise is first of all a business; an organization focuses on profits and not only well-being as students are! Most of the time, information is vitally strategic and can’t be spread out all around the globe. Filtering sensitive information and controlling intellectual property rights is, for most business organizations, an everyday battle both internally and externally. Furthermore, business organizations generally have a multiplicity of stakeholders from shareholders and employees, to civil servants, which bring about a more hierarchical division of labor which should be managed using social tools. Therefore, all these important points should be taken into consideration to setup and adapt the concept of social software in companies.
In addition, social networks are still perceived as vague and dangerous for most human beings. What is a Social Network? What are its goals? Which values and effectiveness does it have on our private and business lives? There are still unanswered questions.
What is Community management?
“Community management is a practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. While social networking has gone on almost as long as societies themselves have existed, the unparalleled potential of the Internet to promote such connections is only now being fully recognized and exploited, through Web-based groups established for that purpose”. (Ivy Wigmore)
Figure 2: Diagram illustration of community management
Why the need for community management?
Communities are defined by the adherence of their members to a set of shared values,
beliefs, norms and ideas.
Such norms develop over time, and are subject to constant renegotiation in the community.
Evaluation against these ideals determines the place of individual members in the community.
Communities are organised around their leading users and ideals in concentric circles,
from the core to the margins.
The leading community members are those who best embody the community’s shared ideals.
Members may rise in status by showing their allegiance to the community’s values.
Individual communities within a wider field of interest are themselves organized in concentric circles.
Communities within a given field range from smaller specialist groups to generic spaces.
These communities interact and engage with one another, and their membership overlaps.
Users of social media spaces may be motivated by several competing factors.
These include egocentric (individual needs) and altruistic (community needs) motivations,
as well as intrinsic (personal satisfaction) and extrinsic (social rewards) motivations.
Various combinations of these motivations result in a range of commonly observable user
types.
_ Knowledge sharers derive personal satisfaction from sharing with the community.
_ Community facilitators aim to serve the community by safeguarding its social processes.
_ Information seekers come to the community mainly to address their personal needs.
_ Attention seekers feel a need to gain social status within the community.
How do we manage?
Identify possible levels of engagement with different user types. Map them onto an engagement framework combining activities within third-party and (where necessary) in-house social media spaces.
Especially in the early stages of community development, treat the role of community manager or community animator as a priority, and ensure that staffs are enthusiastic and capable. Confirm that they understand what is required of them.
The anticipated influx of new members to the community makes it necessary to plan for a staged roll-out of the social media space that opens the space to new participants only gradually and privileges likely lead users during its early stages.
Plan ahead, to provide the emerging social media community with a steady stream of inputs, which seed community interaction, and content development. Ensure that such material is new and stimulating to the community, and in sharing it, encourage them to respond and participate.
Carefully consider the technical infrastructure supporting the social media space, and ensure that it provides for a range of contribution tasks that increase in difficulty in evenly spaced steps. The experience of early success in contributing to the space encourages users to move towards more elaborate forms of participation, increasing their loyalty to the site.
Ensure that user identities are persistent over time and connected to the user’s profiles in other online spaces, and encourage users to flesh out their online personas with additional information. Consider encouraging the use of real names where appropriate. Encourage communities to sanction disruptive behavior without a need for moderator intervention, but address overzealous bullying of users expressing minority views.
Prepare for the inevitability of moving towards peer moderation processes as the community grows, provide appropriate tools and mechanisms for this form of social accounting, and help train the community in their use. Enable the community to develop a shared understanding of what are seen as desirable and undesirable forms of participation, and encourage it to share this understanding as a set of public guidelines for all contributors.
Track user participation in the social media space and build strong relationships with community members to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the social media community. Regularly review community activities and the social media platforms supporting it, and update the technical and social infrastructure to enhance collaborative processes. Extensively consult the community on any development activity.
Work closely with the leaders of the social media community as they emerge, and draw on their knowledge and expertise in managing the community, developing the social media space, and developing new products and services. Be transparent about your actions as you harness community leaders in this way, and ensure that they are able to maintain their trusted position in the community. Consider community leaders as potential new staff, but ensure that any such transition is managed with utmost transparency.
Understand the expectations of contributors in relation to their ownership and authorship rights, and develop mutually acceptable licensing arrangements. Transparently display such arrangements and educate new users about their rights and obligations. Maintain the community’s goodwill by meticulously acknowledging the authorship of individual contributors where their ideas are utilized by the organization.
Conclusion
Virtually everyone belong to one social network, and these has transforming our life, work and world.
Even so, social services started a few years ago for students and Web evangelists and it’s now turning up everywhere, even politicians, and business men and women alike are all involve.
Social networking is not only an online trend: goals have been the same for ages. As we are essentially social creatures, we need to be connected with others. Of course ways are changing especially with Internet use and globalization. Social software is coming out to bring the best services to end-users to add value to worldwide communication. But don’t forget face-to-face meetings, conference participation, etc. they will always be the best place to share and connect with the world’s main connectors and also enhance your career.
Enterprises need to collaborate, cooperate, communicate and connect in better ways. A large range of tools are now available, even if some people think there are too many choices, it brings many possibilities to companies wishing to set up their brand new “2.0 tools”. In spite of that, the market is perhaps not very mature, and fast developments might complicate things to follow for newcomers.
But as improves, social software is going to penetrate everything. To illustrate the whole picture of the growth, it would be impossible to see someone (or some companies or educational institution) without an online presence as it is impossible to see someone without a mobile phone on the street now. Of course, it seems crazy, but wasn’t it the same debate about mobile phones ten years ago?
Naturally it’s difficult to forecast what social networks are going to become in ten or even five years. It is believed that we are only in the first of the five eras of the Social Web as shown below
1. Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2. Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3. Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4. Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5. Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services
The Web is going to change, especially in light of the semantic web. This development of the World Wide Web will expand content in a format that can be read and used by automated tools, thus permitting people and machines to find, share and integrate information more easily. The vision is fantastic yet futuristic. The rich fabric of the Web today, with its hundreds of open APIs and even vaster reservoirs of content and raw data now opens the door to new possibilities. The future is quite already here, have not with the blossoming of the web 3.0
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