Home > Over The Top > Issue 2 > The SocialITe
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Facebook: anyone know of a quicker, cheaper or more effective way of arranging an event?
Blackberry Messenger: great for communicating information you’d rather didn’t get policed?
Having become enthralled by last month’s press coverage around rioting looters, many onlookers will have been surprised by how many of Britain’s teenagers use business communications tool Blackberry as their window on the world. That platform’s undetectable private messaging environment proved perfect for the task of quickly and covertly coalescing looters into a critical mass.
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On the same subject, anyone who ever questioned the popularity of Facebook as a productivity tool will be eating their words with the news that a pair of wannabe riot-organisers were sent to prison for four-year jail terms after using the social network for mass incitement.
And those were just the ones who got caught!
These are great examples of how people always find a way of communicating, often in ways and means that aren’t expected. In that respect, business users are no different. The truth is that these increasingly mobilised applications are increasingly mobilising processes and work practices – often for the better, occasionally for worse. Whole organisations, defined in part by the social communications habits of their users, need help facing up to that reality.
Let’s not forget, the teenagers of today will be the business users of tomorrow, entering the working world with more social communications knowledge than ever before. Organisations need to get ready for the mobile evolution and be prepared and proactive in finding solutions to modify business processes as these new technologies evolve.
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