Everyday we receive new numbers that show that an always increasing number of  people are “on” an increasing number of social networks, that such percentage of an age class is there, that such country is more represented than another or is slowly bridging the gap with the others etc…

Hence the unavoidable conclusion : almost everybody is comfortable with the social logic and the tools that come with and, logically, everybody will be comfortable to use them in the workplace and even ask for them.

A first reflection about the number of users. If we differenciate the number of registered people from the number of active users, the numbers dramatically drop, as we recently sauw with twitter. If I had to sum the number of services where I have an account I oppened just to try or to be findable whenever someone looks for me, the number of services I actually use may be less than 10%. If I consider the average user who finally accepted an invitation because he was fed up with receiving tens or hundreds of invitations from his friends to join the last trendy platform…and who forgot both is password and the fact he had an account there…

What matters when it comes to assess the wealth of social medias is not the number of users but what they actually do (provided they do anything). So let’s focus on those who are really active.

Consider Facebook for instance. Look at the most common usage. Say what you’re doing, what you’re thinging. Share a joke. Share something you’ve seen elsewhere on the web. Does it remind you of something ? It’s exactly what we used to do with emails in the late 90s. Today, instead of sending a joke or a video to our whole address book by email why share it one Facebook. We also play on Facebook. In the 2000s, games were standalone services. We used to play and invite friends to the game… Now everything happens in the same environment. As for really new usages, some are very interesting but only concern a little minority of users.

Now, let’s consider more business oriented social networks, like linkedIn. Many are “on”, use them to push their applications when they are looking for a job (sometimes in a clumsy way without understanding that networks work differently than conventional ways), to push their product when they have something to sell. Some participate in groups, but not everybody. Some use the social filter to qualify their contacts…but a few people really do that.

There is a big difference between being on a social network and using it. Then, there is a difference that is at least as big between using them to make things “as usual” and using them to do new things or old things in a new way.

Now, let’s have a look at the workplace… [Read more...]