So you've heard people talking about them but are blogs, wikis and other social software tools just another technology fad? Social software lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate using a computer network. Learn about social software on Internet, what this means for enterprise knowledge management systems, and discuss how this will affect knowledge management within organizations. This presentation was made at the NSW KM Forum on 7th July, 2005 in Sydney, Australia.

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Social Software:
KM Panacea... or Technology Fad?
James Dellow
Presented to the NSW KM Forum on 7th July, 2005
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Next Generation KM
Previous generations of KM really focused on
●
information management issues
The next generation of KM features:
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– Knowledge ecologies made up of communities of
practice and social networks
– Convergence with innovation and decision
support
It continues to be supported and driven in part by
●
information technology, but with less emphasis on
the capture and reuse paradigm (not a “thing” to be
managed)
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Tsunami in the blogosphere
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The Social Software Cloud
Wikis
Social Search
Social Networking
Tags
RSS
Media Sharing
Instant Messaging
Locality and Proximity
Feed Readers
Blogs
Social Bookmarking
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RSS Readers or
Aggrigators
RSS (XML)
Weblogs Wiki Wiki
(or Blogs) (or Wiki)
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The Same... But Different
Groupware and Social Software
● ●
Collaboration Software – Clay Shirky (2002)
– Ray Ozzie (1989) – Bottom up/outward in
– Top down/inward out – Self-organising,
– emergent networks
Bounded networks
(organisational, – quot;Small pieces, loosely
project, business joinedquot; (David
relationship) Weinberger)
– Enterprise software – Innovation by and for
platforms with consumers first
interoperability added
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Challenges
People
●
Process
●
Content
●
Technology
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Conclusions
In theory, social software is a natural fit with
●
next generation KM
Technology isn't the issue, but it is the issue:
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– Grey Area: Information Management vs Social
Software
– Beware of social software hype - confusion
between form and function
– Social software innovation is being driven
primarily by consumer applications
– More information risks exist for organisations
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