The New Corporate Intranet
My company has an intranet with a wealth of information, but it is under utilized. In this post, I discussed a number of web services that I use including netvibes, which aggregates RSS feeds. Today, while monitoring my finance tab, an article about my company appeared, but was not posted to the intranet. This made me think of social networking and how myspace, facebook, and live spaces offer the services companies need, for a fraction of the cost of a custom intranet.
This article on netbanker discusses Co-operative Bank in the UK, and how they have built a custom myspace page for better customer interaction.
UK’s Co-operative Bank <co-operativebank.co.uk> posted an excellent page that reinforces its reputation as a good corporate citizen (screenshot below). There’s an interactive poll about automobile taxes, a CO 2 emissions calculator, some videos, wallpaper downloads, and the usual MySpace stuff. And to drum up friends, an important measure of success on MySpace, the bank will donate 20p to The Children’s Society for everyone who signs on. So far its raised about US$20 with 48 friends. But the number is growing quickly; in the last 12 hours growing more than 50%, from 31 friends to 48.
Facebook and live spaces offer similar options with several notable exceptions. The former has a community of 24 million+ members, offers blogging, RSS imports, pictures, and custom applications through F8. Live spaces offers a similar layout to facebook, full customization with RSS feeds, blogging, a guest book, and will be compatable with Microsoft’s new PopFly platform. I personally use facebook and live spaces, and appreciate the service that both products offer.
Between the three networks, which are currently free, companies have an opportunity to create functional and transparent websites. Externally, these applications allow employees and customers to interact with each other, and build a level of trust. Internally, they provide an opportunity for companies to refine themselves and generate honest feedback. Microsoft is the innovator of “opening its doors” with employee blogs and the launch of Channel 9, which has transformed Microsoft from an “evil empire” into a community.
As stated in the ReadMe.txt:
Channel 9 is all about the conversation. Channel 9 should inspire Microsoft and our customers to talk in an honest and human voice. Channel 9 is not a marketing tool, not a PR tool, not a lead generation tool.
One caveat is that communication would need to be monitored for discussion of private customer information, and Microsoft understands that too.
Know when to turn the mic off. There are some topics which will only result in problems when you discuss them. This has nothing to do with censorship, but with working within the reality of the system that exists in our world today. You will not change anything by taking on legal or financial issues, you will only shock the system, spook the passengers, and create a negative situation.
Social networking is your new corporate intranet.
Technorati Tags: accessibility, community, Facebook, Live Spaces, myspace, Netvibes, Microsoft, RSS
Posted on May 31st, 2007 | By: bootstrap economist | Filed under Web Technologies
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