Real Time Social Communication - Why Not In the Enterprise?

I have often been asked the question by many professionals as to why I think real time social communication such as Twitter should be used in a more formal, corporate setting. Most companies are still wrestling with the likes of wikis and blogs, so the real time social communication and networking is very foreign predominantly speaking.

However there are some very common non-corporate uses that are very powerful for companies. Remember how the Mumbai terror attacks came to Twitter first? And more recently the quake in Haiti? Big companies have their own equivalent internal events. Most of the time it is done by word of mouth and formal communication rather than any form of micro-blogging. However in most cases getting the word out to employees can be very beneficial and powerful such as network outages, service disruptions, etc. This would allow employees to be aware of something that they may have to be concerned about and follow up with appropriate personnel to understand how to deal with it. Let's say there is a new rewards system being used by HR for compensation. Rather than wait for an internal newsletter, an internal tweet could be sent to appropriate followers. Or how about something as simple as a big traffic accident is outside a main campus and employees in the building may not know about it. Another good use would be something like networking connectivity for an entire campus is lost and lots of employees tweet about it on their mobile phones so internal groups can track it down.

These are all wonderful ideas that many of my colleagues have come up with on the top of their heads. There are many other more pertinent events that could be communicated as well ranging from HR events, to product launches, management changes, new policies about purchasing office supplies, or even free food in a part of the building for fellow employees to take.

Yet the issue almost always ends up being the corporate governance of such communications. In many older more established companies, paranoia about inappropriate information being communicated weighs heavily on many minds. It can range from sexually explicit material, intellectual property, to personnel issues, and many others. For every legitimate and valuable communication, there are also inappropriate and liable ones as well. The risk often in the minds of corporate leadership is far too great to implement. There are no controls, the employees cannot be trusted, etc. The list is pretty long.

In the end there is truth on both sides. Yet in my opinion the ability to move quickly is critical to an organization's effectiveness. Formal communications while accurate are slow and ponderous as compared to today's lightning fast needs. Adoption of more real time social communications provide many more benefits in this respect than most other forms and when woven in with the existing collaboration and communication plans, this can become a valuable asset to any organization.