Dell Uses Social Media to Promote Brand

By Dave Fidlin

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, companies had one primary method of connecting with consumers, and that was through advertisements within the traditional forms of media: print publications (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast outlets (television and radio). The Internet, of course, has altered the playing field, and social media has become a prevalent method many companies have been using to reach out to new and existing customers.

Computer manufacturer Dell is among the companies that have been embracing social media to market new products. In fact, the company employs a chief blogger, Lionel Menchaca, who is responsible for a swath of sites under the banner name Direct2Dell.

DMB’s Dave Fidlin recently spoke with Menchaca, a 17-year Dell veteran, about social media, and how the method will continue to shape the company’s marketing and outreach efforts in the future.

Can you explain your role as chief blogger for Dell?
My role is to keep things moving with our external network of blogs. Direct2Dell now exists in five languages. Direct2Dell is our main corporate blog. Beyond it, we have 7 additional blogs. Our latest is Direct2Dell India, which focuses content on one of our fastest-growing countries in Dell’s business.

How is Dell marketing beyond established, traditional methods? Is the company getting the word out about its products through such avenues as Facebook and Twitter?
Yes, very much so. We have two main pages in Facebook — Facebook for Home, which focuses on product and service information for consumers and Facebook for Business, which focuses on reaching business customers there. We’ve been very active on Twitter as a company since 2007. We use Twitter in 4 main ways: 1) to keep our customers informed 2) to engage our customers from different areas of our business 3) to sell to our customers who opt in to sites like @DellOutlet and 4) to support our customers. We now offer 24/7 support to customers on Twitter via @DellCares. See Dell.com/twitter for more details

Aside from the two big companies — Facebook and Twitter — how else is Dell using social media?
Our core strategy in social media is to go where our customers are. That means we maintain a Dell presence in many other social sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Scribd and outside the US in Sina’s microblogging service. Beyond our own blogs, our forum site and all of our presence on outside social networks, we’re also focused on responding to comments on other places on the Web, like third-party user forums or blog sites.

Can you quantify, percentage-wise, how much of Dell’s marketing and outreach efforts go toward social media (versus traditional marketing) in 2010?
Our social media marketing budget is very small compared to our traditional marcom spend. Outside of some ad credits to drive awareness to the Dell Facebook for Home pages and drawing attention to some of our social media efforts via Dell.com, we spend very little to promote our social media activities.

Do you have an idea of what the ROI (rate of return) is for Dell’s social media efforts?
Yes, we do, and that’s an area where we are still working on. In the early days, we measured social media’s impact on customers’ perceptions and found a pretty strong correlation—at the low point in 2006, about 48 percent of what was said about Dell was negative. We were able to get that into the low 20+ percent range. Today, we’re able to track all the basic traffic numbers you would expect, but beyond traffic, we’re looking at things like reach, engagement, brand reputation and more. We’re also starting to use more of the same tools on the social media side that we’ve been using to measure Dell.com like Omniture. There’s still more work to be done, but we’re making progress.

Where, in your opinion, is social media heading into the future, and how is Dell going to stay on the pulse of this still-growing method of communication?
I really think over the next several years, social media will become an integral part of how companies in many industries will do business. To me it’s a natural progression to add from things like telephones, e-mail, the Internet, chat and beyond. Just like many other aspects of business, it all comes down to execution. In my view, companies who learn to use social media to really connect with their customers will have a huge fundamental advantage over companies who don’t.

Do you envision a day when social media might completely replace traditional marketing methods, or is that an extreme statement?
No way do I think that social media will ever replace traditional marketing methods. I do think that social media can and will continue to augment traditional marketing methods. I think social media will make companies smarter in how they market to and engage with customers, and I think that’s a good thing. Like many others in social media today, I’m glad to see the era of one-way push marketing giving way to something different – a place where customer feedback shapes the direction of the company.

Can technology help parents monitor their kids online?

By James Zipadelli

While kids and teens have grown up with technology and using the Internet, it’s not always easy for parents to monitor them online. There are many online services who offer technology that can be used to monitor your child’s Internet use. Among the most recognizable websites are SafeKids, KidsHealth.org and NetSmartz.org, which is run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  Norton Family Online also has software that parents can find helpful.

Into this crowded field comes SafetyWeb.com, a website that attempts to bring technology and the expanding reach of the Internet to parents’ fingertips. Once parents access the Web site, they can put in their child’s email address for free to see how many times they are mentioned on the Web. Once they click “Search Now” a query goes out to more than 800 million social profiles across 100 social networks and public Web sites, says SafetyWeb.com co-founder Geoffrey Arone. To access more of the site’s features, parents can sign up for $10 per month. Generally, there are three settings regarding profiles: “private,” which means the child’s information on that website has been made private; “public” and “exposed,” which means that some of your child’s information on a website, such as LinkedIn, is private and some is public.

SafetyWeb.com is very user-friendly and built like a social Web site. Parents and kids can easily see what is being said about them on public websites like Facebook and  Twitter. If there is something positive the child has done, such as make their information on Facebook private, it is highlighted in green; if something is a cause for concern, such as profanity, it is highlighted in red. SafetyWeb.com does not look at private networks, such as a child’s or teen’s email.

Experts DigitalMediaBuzz.com spoke to all say any Web site is no substitute for good parenting and communicating with your child.

“We will not guarantee that child will not make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes,” Arone says. “However, we will help ensure that when they do make mistakes, we are there to help you ensure that it is not broadcast to the world, thus potentially jeopardizing your child’s privacy, safety and online reputation.”

According to Arone, technologies that attempt to restrict Internet use by ‘blocking’ websites or spying on kids are ineffective.

“The format of having one centralized home PC is shifting,” Arone says. “Kids today connect from computers at home, public computers at available schools and libraries, mobile devices, iPads, and when all else fails they can use their friends’ machines.”

Arone says SafetyWeb.com grew out of his experience doing interviews with prospective students for colleges and universities. He says while the quality of students has gone up, so has the digital footprint of those students - and a Google search easily reveals questionable content.

“The kids and teens we spoke with initially reacted to existing solutions (spy or block) very negatively,” Arone says. “Once I demoed SafetyWeb and made it clear that what we were searching was already out in the open, they were a lot more accepting, and in some cases relieved. People forget the amount of information that is out there. Our goal is not to catch and punish, but detect, share and encourage communication - that is going to lead to successful communication online.”

Hilary Bates, a spokesman for the children’s magazine Highlights, says the magazine did a survey in which they asked parents whether they used an online service to help keep their kids safe. ”Less than 3% of our respondents mentioned using a NetNanny or other service,” Bates says. “Obviously, when we included Glubble users, that number changed. But Glubble users tended to talk about how the technology was a tool, not a stand-alone solution to security.”

“Highlights recommends that families get involved with their kids’ on-line experience, as they do with other media, so it is a chance to share positive skills, and help kids navigate the risks as well,” Bates adds.

Devra Renner, a licensed social worker and author of the book  Mommy Guilt: Learn to Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most, and Raise Happier Kids, has a tip for parents on how to tell if their child is using the Internet properly. Renner has two children, ages 9 and 14.

“If your child is active on the Internet, sit down with them and have them show you the places they visit, the social networks they use, and how they use them,” Renner says. “Not only does it allow them to teach you something, it builds their confidence, and yours, that they understand what they are doing online. If they are unable to communicate to you what they do online, then you probably have a logical reason to incorporate a monitoring service.  And if you decide to use the service, you can explain, “You know what, we’re going to try this for a while until all of us are more comfortable with using the Internet.”

Renner also says a good way to find out if your child is could use the Internet responsibility is to monitor how they handle their friends and responsibilities offline.

“Ask other parents about the sites their children use and how they use it,” Renner says. “Keep in mind your child will inevitably make mistakes online. Keep your response in check by making sure your child understands the mistake, help them fix it if you can, and have them tell you ways they can possibly prevent the mistake from happening again.”

At Chirp, Twitter’s Trends Emerge

By James Zipadelli

The best football players go to the Super Bowl. The best celebrities, journalists and politicians come to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Up until this year, the best developers did not have a venue to come together. Chirp, Twitter’s first ever conference in San Francisco, was held last month.  Where else can you find Twitter’s founders, like-minded developers, and a contest that kept some of those developers up for 30 hours?

For a first-person account of Chirp, freelance developer Ed Borasky’s posts are very helpful. Representatives from Twitter did not respond to repeated emails or Tweets for comment.

In that two-day conference, Twitter discussed its financial future and new apps that would be helpful to users, according to developers present at the conference. One of the new apps is called @anywhere, which went live April 14. For an overview, click here.

“@anywhere is essentially a re-packaging of existing Twitter API services in a more turnkey solution that can be easily be embedded into existing websites without lots of custom coding,” says Eric Chang, founder of the app TweetSwell, which conducts surveys on Twitter.  “You can “embed” Twitter functionality into your web page using JavaScript, including:

• embedded tweet box - just copy-and-paste some JavaScript into your web page
• auto-linking of Twitter accounts - this is similar to how the iPhone auto-links phone numbers
• auto-hovercards - same idea, but instead of linking to Twitter, pop up the Twitter hovercard

Evan Bailyn, founder of firstpagesage.com, says Twitter has “done a nice job” with @anywhere but still prefers Facebook because of features such as the “Like” button.

“I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near what Facebook’s social graph is,” Bailyn says. “I think it’s going to be for people that Tweet the most. I don’t know that it’s going to bring tons of new people… most of the people that use @anywhere a lot will already tweet a lot and it will just make their tweeting easier.”

“The Like concept is very natural to online browsing and socializing. It’s a lot easier than typing something,” Bailyn adds. “Personalized stories are an idea that might have been good for Twitter to employ.  Points of Interest, a new Twitter function, makes it easier to associate your location with whatever you’re tweeting. You can tweet about a location you’re at, and find a restaurant.  This could provide a lot of personalized information about travel, nightlife, restaurants. @anywhere isn’t as exciting as Points of Interest.”

Peoplebrowsr CEO Jodee Rich says the key to Twitter’s success is that their stream is open and available to third parties developers. A cloud has already been developed that has enough space to support 20 terabytes of data, Rich says. For those that are interested, here is Rich’s slideshow on the metadata cloud.

“Developers have taken the stream and put it up in the cloud,” Rich says. “What we’re really doing is extending the half life of the tweet. You can look in the cloud and find data from six months ago or more. Twitter data is open, third parties developers can store it for a long time - it then becomes a cloud that extends metadata coming from third parties developers, adding to Twitter profiles information about gender, influence, fields of expertise and more. Both Private and public data can be added to Twitter profiles and posts.

“Now Facebook is allowing people to store the stream for an unlimited amount of time; another reaction to Twitter,” Rich says.

Some developers were worried about Twitter’s recent acquisition of Atebits to acquire the iPhone client Tweetie. Borasky says, “Twitter made a business decision. Using phrases like ’stabbed in the back’ or sexual references, despite the way one might feel about it, isn’t either appropriate or particularly relevant or useful.”

“I’m on the StatusNet developers’ list,” Borasky adds. “In some ways, it’s complementary to Twitter rather than direct competition. But I’m guessing that those who truly intend to

compete with Twitter via StatusNet are still working at it. I was never formally invited to join the ‘rebels’ and didn’t see much point in doing so anyhow.” Andrew Stone, who developed the iPhone app Twittelator, says the worry is “way overblown.”

“My twitter client, Twittelator, shows that 3rd party developers run circles around Twitter with new interesting features,” Stone says. “I got up at Chirp and said, “Thank you for buying Tweetie! I now have one less competitor. Don’t worry, just do some cool stuff and you can compete with Twitter and Tweetie.”

Borasky says the future for Twitter is very promising if they partner with other media organizations.

“They’ve got Oxygen, MSNBC, the NY Times and Huffington Post already,” Borasky says. “I’d expect to see some name movie studios join that list for the summer blockbuster season.”

“The Promoted Tweets and analytics capabilities are still evolving,” Borasky adds. The kinds of questions their developers were asking me indicate that they’re looking to hire experts in this area. That’s a fiercely competitive arena, and their only real advantage is their huge raw data collection and real-time acquisition. The analytics, visualization, and natural language processing technologies are well-developed elsewhere.”

Stone calls Twitter “a beautiful meeting of media and personality.”

“It’s not a walled garden, like Facebook,” Stone says. “The degrees of separation between people on Twitter are very small. You can get some serious resonance with an interesting tweet. It’s fun to come up with content that’s small, easy and tight. It’s just this totally new experience.”

“We’re writing cool code that’s changing the world,” Stone adds. “Chirp was fundamentally about the team building and for that, it was truly successful.”

Peoplebrowsr’s Rich, like other developers DigitalMediaBuzz.com interviewed for this story, says he enjoyed the “openness and authenticity” of the Chirp conference.

“We truly felt like we were part of the Twitter family,” Rich says. “I’ve never been to a conference where they exposed the non-executive board members as openly as they did. I’ve never seen a management team go up on stage and explain how they are running their business. It’s very exciting to be part of that.”

Archiving Tweets, With the Help of Google

By James Zipadelli

While much of the media attention recently has focused on the Library of Congress making Twitter a part of history, Google was doing the same thing, on a smaller scale. Google’s feature, called replay, which was recently rolled out.

Google spokesman Jake Hubert says the replay feature helps broaden the scope and relevance of real-time search. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine launched real-time search in December 2009.

“Twitter and other micro-blogging services host useful content about breaking news, public opinion, and hyper-local events like weddings and bike races,” Hubert says. “Sometimes the only place someone published information is in short-form from a mobile phone. Just as people want to search for Web sites, today people want to be able to search the public content on update services like Twitter.”

The feature uses a Twitter feed to archive people’s text messages, called Tweets, which is subject to an agreement made between the two companies last year. Hubert says the agreement allows Google “to protect user privacy by ensuring we can delete tweets from our feature in a timely manner after a user deletes a tweet on twitter.com.”

According to Hubert, initially, the Tweets will be archived going back to Feb. 11, 2010; they hope to eventually archive the entire history of Twitter, which began in March 2006.

“When you’re in the “Updates” and “Any time” view in search options, we apply ranking algorithms to determine the most relevant updates content for your search,” Hubert says. “Once you click into the chart and explore Tweets from a specific time, we organize those tweets by date and time, enabling users to see a “replay” of the activity on Twitter about that subject during that time period.”

Co-founder of Twitter reacts
Dominic Sagolla, co-founder of Twitter and author of “140 Characters” (Wiley, 2009) says the inclusion of Tweets into the Library of Congress fulfills the goal Twitter’s inventor, Jack Dorsey, had, which is, “One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.” According to Sagolla even though many powerful people have been using Twitter since its founding, it became popular once presidential candidates and the White House started using it regularly.

“Individual tweets can be interesting or mundane, but what is truly fascinating are the trends and patterns in aggregate,” Sagolla says. “For example, the shapes and patterns of sand on a beach are considered beautiful, whether or not you may find beauty in an individual grain of sand.”

Sagolla says Twitter helps Google and the way it indexes information.

“The message itself is simply a seed, the beginning of relevance. Beneath the message is a deep root structure of meaning and association, and Twitter’s new developer tools will enable us to add even more information to each tweet,” Sagolla says. “Each result in a Google search has a relevance score associated with it once it is found. Each message sent from Twitter has relevance associated with it _from the start_, making discovery easier and more immediate.”

Sagolla also talked about the impact of Twitter in the world, from the Twitpic of the “Miracle on the Hudson” to places like Mumbai, Iran, Haiti and Chile.

“Mobile devices penetrate the walls of society and short-form messaging provides the transparency that we sorely need. We will soon see a tipping point, where those who govern us will hear our voices more clearly,” Sagolla says.

Founder of Craigslist reacts to Twitter and the LOC
“I don’t think we have value in the historical context in the same way Twitter does,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark says. “The great value of Twitter is that people do serious work via Twitter, like breaking news, how the world is changing. I do feel this decade represents a tipping point in the way people work with each other, and there will be great shifts of power and influence to the grassroots.

“We have a database which might be useful to detect trends, both behavioral and economic, and maybe someday we can look at that, but right now were swamped and

there are privacy issues,” Newmark says. “We could archive that information, though we are obsessed with privacy. We fear disclosing personal information and were passionate about privacy so we’re very careful.” There are 1.6 billion ads in the Web site’s database.

“In terms of the big trend, I think people are using the Net more and more for down to earth things,” Newmark adds. “Our site is about housing and jobs and everyday needs. Explicitly, we show that it’s easy to work together for mutual benefit and it’s easy to do so.”

What analysts have to say about the future of Twitter and social media
Pitzer College Media Studies professor Alex Juhasz says she supports the addition of Tweets to the Library of Congress. Juhasz taught a class previously within YouTube’s framework and will teach it again this fall.

“The way we benefit as a society is that the voices of everyday people expressing the texture and regular practices of daily life will be available to historians in the future,” Juhasz says. “So it won’t be just from headlines, and presidents, and the seats of capital but a more complex and diverse picture of history.”

“For YouTube, they do a poor job of archiving. If National Archives is archiving Tweets we assume that it will take seriously the work of archiving these materials. Because it’s text-based, it’s easy to search and categorize. YouTube is currently not a useful database for serious pursuits.”

Gartner analyst Jeff Mann says there are other archives besides the Library of Congress.

“In 1776, it was the Declaration of Independence and today it’s Twitter,” Mann says. I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing. There are different types of archivists - some have an academic and others have a public interest approach. That’s what Google is trying to do, organize world’s info and make it more accessible. But they won’t have all the solutions because there will be other archives (like the Way Back Machine.)

API Tricks and Tips: APIs Deliver Profits

By John Greaves

Application Programming Interfaces(API) used to be a means to market products, they were often free and served to drive traffic to a site or increase buzz around a company’s offering.  Now we’ve begun to see increasing numbers of companies built around monetizing APIs  rather than relegating them to marketing tools status.

While OneRiot’s success with Riotwise is well documented and DMB recently unpacked the potential behind geodata APIs in a March 2010 article, there are other areas from telecom to financial data management where API companies are pushing the boundaries of how APIs can be profitable.

Twilio
Twilio CEO and co founder Jeff Lawson describes their service as “Amazon Web Services meets telecom.”  Simply put Lawson says Twilio lets developers build applications that can make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages.  Lawson says Twilio aimed to combine infrastructure web services with telecom in a new way.  “In the enterprise there have been application development platforms in the past. What we were trying to do is to change and bring the capabilities that enterprises have had for a while and really bring that to every developer.  And so making technology simpler was a major goal of ours but the good thing was that there was precedent people paying for not just telecom on a per use basis but also paying for infrastructure web services, so people were accustomed to if you want servers on demand paying Amazon for them.”  According to a Crunchbase company profile, “Before Twilio, you would have had to learn some foreign telecom programming languages, or set up an entire stack of PBX software … Twilio lets you use your existing web development skills, existing code, existing servers, existing databases and existing karma to solve problems quickly and reliably.”

Twilio“s list of customers includes web development shop 37signals which uses Twilio in their Campfire product and they also uses theme based contests to inspire aspiring developers.  “We have a developer contest every week and for over a year we’ve given away a Netbook every week to the developer who writes the best application with a certain theme.  We give developers a week, sometimes two to build something along the lines of the theme.  We’re getting developers involved in the brand and the company and also giving developers an extra incentive to build something that they’re thinking about building,” Lawson said.

Twistage
According to Twistage founder and CEO David Wadler, the company has “a rather extensive footprint in enterprise.”  Since 2007, they have gone from what blogger Liz Gannes referred to as “a stealthy newly funded video startup” to an industry leader that can boast partnerships with Jive Social Business Software.

The secret behind this rise is an easy to understand metering monetization model that allows their customers to purchase allocations in blocks of API components.  “It’s much easier for non technical people, and oftentimes those are the people who have control of the budget or have to make the case for the logistical spend.”  When overages occur, Wadler says Twistage works with the customer to address it.  “In general as a model we don’t like to penalize people for being successful so where possible we volume discount them,” Wadler said.

Twistage’s approach has led to a customer base which includes Mochila, PerezHilton.com, The New York Observer, Kidzbop, and Fast Company, is a technology partner with Jive, a Social Business Software leader and targets companies who already have an existing IT budget and infrastructure who need and want to use video for education and product marketing.

X Ignite
Pete Soderling, founder of Stratus Security Technologies an API monetization consultancy, calls XIgnite “one of the forerunners of this industry” for its use of APIs in financial information delivery and distribution.

X Ignite bills itself as the leading provider of financial web services for mission-critical corporate applications.  In fact, it claims XIgnite web services are used to power hundreds of mission-critical applications from proprietary systems handling hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate loans to applications trading gold, crude oil, or currencies around the clock and around the world.

“They have relationships with all of the major stock exchanges and they pull and suck in data from the exchanges, normalize it, sort of make it uniform and then basically act as a distribution channel and resell that data to other financial institutions, developers, investment banks, research firms what have you, so they’re like sort of a middle man in taking in that valuable data from the exchanges and then blasting it out,” Soderling said.

What Does It Mean?

As businesses try to ride out the economic storm, they are bailing unnecessary costs over the side and attempting to reef the sails with tech solutions that do the same things better, faster and cheaper.  API developers who can add value without overloading the bottom line may find that the recession cloud is lined with success.

Knowledge Management: Measuring Social Media ROI

By James Zipadelli

Companies are harnessing the potential of social media to make connections with their clients through so-called “knowledge-management systems.” Knowledge management systems are programs that harness the power of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and track a company’s “buzz” around the Web.

What companies using social media say

One company that is doing this is Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com has an internal social media application, Chatter. 500 clients are using Chatter now, and this service is available to clients who have a subscription to Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com says it has more than 72,000 clients and 150,000 apps in the cloud community.

“People want to have relevance, connect easily to other people, and using devices to do it,” says Ariel Kelman, VP of platform and product marketing, Salesforce.com. “They’re accessing more though smartphones and notebook PCs. That’s Cloud 1. In Cloud 2, we’re looking to YouTube and Facebook, which is the magic of Chatter. We’re looking at the feed as your ultimate user experience. We want real-time status updates and platform technology to be as easy to use and alive with data is as easy as Facebook.”

“With Chatter, we are resetting people’s expectations for how their apps should behave,” Kelman says. “When they go into work, their expectations are Facebook Twitter and YouTube work. That’s why IT organizations have to reset their priorities and a new set of demands. They’re going to be asking the CIO, why can’t our application use Facebook?”

Another company that uses social media to track company buzz around the Web is OneRiot, which calls itself a “real-time search engine.” OneRiot spokesperson Courtney Walsh says traditional search engines don’t deliver what OneRiot can, which are socially relevant results on any topic in real time.

“OneRiot is a search engine. Although, rather than a traditional search engine, OneRiot is a realtime search engine,” Walsh says. “While traditional search engines like Google, Bing, Ask.com offer a way to navigate the web and conduct research - realtime search offers a way to search any topic to find the current buzz.  Realtime search is a great addition to the whole search experience.”

Businesses can use OneRiot to track their company buzz. Search “Microsoft” or “Google” and there is a collection of videos, articles, blog posts and Tweets which people are sharing.

Carlin Wiegner, CEO of the enterprise social software website CubeTree.com describes social media as “good” for the business. “Sometimes, it’s the only way you can reach people,” Wiegner says. “But you’re also trying to drive revenue and making customers happy. Most people are trying to do old way or new way.”

Wiegner says it’s helpful to do polls of CubeTree.com users and changes its software every week, although most changes are incremental.

“One, clearly more than one customer sees this need,” Wiegner says. “Two, it shows the customer they’re engaging in feedback. Those are sometimes the most passionate users but not all the users. Three, competition: We constantly think about where our competitors are going to be. Finally, you also need to have a vision. That’s why you need a project manager but it’s exciting to see what people want fixes to the product.”

What the analysts say
Gartner analyst Michael Maoz says companies are beginning to understand the value of social media and how it helps their businesses.

“There’s just as much value being able to foster internal social communication, and it’s not written about much,” Maoz says. “For example, with social media, companies are onboarding a new employee more quickly - plugging that person right into everyone. Before social media, a new employee comes in, and they jump around from server to server. When you bring together social media in form of wikis, blogs and integrated knowledge systems, they more quickly get a sense of, ah, this is who we are.”

According to Maoz, using social media saves time and money because people can find what they are looking for faster.

“It reduces the number of support personnel that they need directly and also helps product development,” Maoz says. “Instead of figuring out what to work on, I observe the community. Some companies, like Apple, Google, or Amazon don’t work that way. They say, ‘This is how the customer will interact.’”

Maoz used the example of Microsoft and Oracle having communities of developers posting solutions to questions instead of employees. Maoz says the benefit for the developer is two-fold: The developer is sharing information with the consumer and promoting themselves as a trustworthy source in the process.

“These social tools are in a way a mechanism to get back to a level of trust,” Maoz says. “The best way to gain your trust (from a company perspective) is to know what you’re thinking in the first place. We know we’re not perfect, we know you know we’re not perfect and now we’re giving the mechanisms to help you.”

It remains to be seen whether there will be a dominant social organizer on the Web, like Google for search engines. ABI analyst Dan Shey says there will not be a dominant social organizer on the Web.

“I think social networking is enhancing current applications already used in the enterprise.  I would say that search is an important function for internally-focused enterprise social networking - the ability to search the web and internal databases for data specific to a group’s needs.”

Gartner’s Maoz is more optimistic.

“I think it’s going to happen, I don’t know when,” Gartner’s Maoz says. “What they’re going to provide me is a secure way to plug into a framework. I’ve got my stuff right there,” referring to his social media tools to communicate. “Facebook is the idea. I want Facebook to fit to me.”

CubeTree’s Wiegner says having a program organizing social media would be helpful.

“We’d love to have a single tool for social media,” Wiegner says. “You really have to get specialized social media tools to figure out who is saying things about you.”

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