A few weeks ago I was having dinner with some non-techy close friends (this group is made of medical doctors, cancer researchers and a photographer – definitely an interesting mix). The conversation was about the economy, the situation in Europe and at one point we started talking about social media / social networking. One of my friends said: “I really don’t get what the big deal is about social networking, I’ve been socially networking since I was little, actually, we’re socially networking right now”.
So, why are we seeing the word SOCIAL being used everywhere? Why are people interested in friending each other on Facebook, why do people become DotNetNuke fans? Why to do people put their ideas in 140 characters? The answer is, because we can. We are social, we like to connect with other people and share our ideas and experiences. The only new thing is that we are taking our social skills to the web which has virtually unlimited scale. So if you're one of those people who wonder why the average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook, you can stop now. We’re just seeing what used to be confined to face to face interactions being exposed to a much larger audience using the Internet.
But, how can businesses extract value from this new trend? Here is a small summary of the things people do on platforms like Facebook:
- People engage with each other
- People generate trust
- People share ideas
- People collaborate
- People share knowledge
During the last few hundred years, enterprises have been improving a command and control model based on a highly controlled communication flow, but we have probably taken this process as far as it can go. The next few 10’s of years will be about adapting to a new model where communication, collaboration and cooperation are more fluid.
In this new model we’re going to focus on extracting the value of relationships, trust, reciprocity and team work. In this new model, your reputation is everything.
But you’re not going to need new tools. You’re going to need your tools to evolve to facilitate the give and take between you and the rest of your organization. You’re going to need platforms like DotNetNuke which is getting tightly integrated with Active Social so they can be used as “social” building blocks for your website, your intranet or any custom application for your organization.
So, now you know why we are so excited about the new release, because it is the first step into the new model, DNN 6.2 will be a step into the future.
