Let’s be clear, I’m talking about value, not about ROI (although the one is a part of the other) and about “social objects” in the large sense of the word : everything that can exist on a social platform, when using social software. It may be a content, an information specially generated, an information shared from elsewhere, a mark given to any contribution, the contribution to a collaborative work…but also the time taken to do so, the attention mobilized while the person may have had something else to do at this time etc…

Behind the everlasting discussions about ROI stands, before all, the question of the value. Does what is done have value, and what value ? In which ways an information and the time needed to publish it can have any value ? You’ll notice that it turns the ROI question not into something about tools and contents but into something wider made of tools, contents, resources and …the context in which the information is used.

That is a point that is often forgotten : it’s the context that determines values, it’s its limiting factor, more than the intrinsic value of the information itself. An insignificant information may be very valuable at a given moment for a given person even though thousands people will have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, a capital information have no value if nobody uses it. It takes us back to a reflection I’ve had a long time ago about strategy maps : intangibles have no intrinsic value but their value depends on how it’s used.

Talking about an enterprise context, let’s make it clear that “value” means the ability to turn information into money.

So the point, not that trivial, is to know when value has to be measured.

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