Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet (and Other Things I Want to Mention but Would Rather Not Discuss)

Glenn Beck is an Insensitive Prick – Beck told his national radio audience that “a handful of people who hate America are losing their homes in a forest fire today,” referring to the wildfires that started in Malibu. First of all, one of those people, Steve Dark, is a conservative who loves America and goes to church every week – or at least he did until his church burned to the ground.

So what does that mean, Glenn? Does God hate America, too? Steve and his Malibu neighbors are looking forward to your answer.

Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet – Why not? Create a Facebook Group, set it up as “Secret” – so it’s not visible to search, only invited members can participate and the group is invisible on members’ profiles – and voila, instant Intranet. Members can post, discuss and share information, even upload photos or host audio or video podcasts (and don’t forget the ability to create custom applications.) Simple to be sure, but for some companies simple is good enough. Goodbye HTML, hello FBML.

Social Media is Not Just About a Set of Tools – Will someone please tell this to Ragan and PRSA? Please, before they hurt somebody? It’s often those who profess to know the future that turn out to be the most shortsighted.

Twit This: Twitter is Good for Something – I know, hard to believe, but San Diego PBS station KPBS used the popular micro-blogging tool to keep residents in touch with the latest wildfire news via their mobile phones. If you do crisis communications, Twitter is a great way to spread the word.

I Gave it an Honest Try, and "Cavemen" is Just Not Funny – I wanted to believe, ABC, I really did. But…damn.

The Audience is Still Smarter Than Us (and Generous) – I don’t know if professional photographer Alex Miroschnichenko’s decision to brave the Santiago Fire in Orange County and distribute his images for free was simply a random act of citizen journalism, but it was a significant act of citizenship.

New Glasses Don’t Make You Any Less Bald – Hey, it was worth a shot. At least I still have time to grow a beard and dress up as Phil Gomes for Halloween (sorry, I know I shouldn’t make fun of a guy about to get married, that’s supposed to happen after the wedding.)

 

 

 

Comments

[Matthew Reinbold]

Lots of good stuff here but I'd just like to comment about the Facebook statement.

While its true that a company Intranet would be possible with a secret Facebook group the uptake on something like that would be pretty poor. Any small company that would otherwise punt services like this (ie. invoicing, time tracking, etc.) to a 3rd party wouldn't need an Intranet. And any company large enough to require an Intranet would be extremely leery (if not downright hostile) to trusting an outside party with information. That's before we've seen what Facebooks next gen contextual advertising does - there were privacy concerns with google applying algorithms to 'read' one's gmail to serve ads; depending on how invasive Facebooks approach is the privacy concerns could be worse.

Perfect for ABC Co's distributed team of twelve? Ok. IBM's intranet? Not a chance.

[Gary Goldhammer]

Hey Matt -- obviously the term "Intranet" means different things to to different people. I only used it to mean a simple internal web site for group collaboration, not for invoicing and time tracking and all that. IBM's corporate Intranet, of course not (wow, I'm not that lame, am I?) -- but for a team of communicators or engineers inside IBM who want to share ideas and best practices, why not?

[Deane]

I maintain that Cavemen is pretty funny. The problem is that they're cavemen. Make them regular people, and you'd have a hit, I'm sure of it.

I'm just waiting for the "plastic surgery" episode, where they all suddenly look like regular people.

[Matthew Reinbold]

A follow up about the Facebook comments - new revelations are coming to light about just how exposed one's 'private' data may be to abuse on Facebook - http://tinyurl.com/23xabf - for anything more than harmless social interaction I would be very wary and encourage businesses to do the same.

[Kami Huyse]

Hmmm, not sure what you mean by PRSA using seeing social media as a "set of tools." A group of us just did a live blog for them (unpaid) at their annual conference and it was a bit more than just tool deployment. I live Twittered most of the sessions and there was a real buzz in some quarters.

http://www.prsaconf07.info

Like many companies that dip their toe in the water with social media, I think that PRSA will progress in this area over the very short term.

[Kami Huyse]

Hmmm, not sure what you mean by PRSA using seeing social media as a "set of tools." A group of us just did a live blog for them (unpaid) at their annual conference and it was a bit more than just tool deployment. I live Twittered most of the sessions and there was a real buzz in some quarters.

http://www.prsaconf07.info

Like many companies that dip their toe in the water with social media, I think that PRSA will progress in this area over the very short term.

[link building company]

Hmmm, not sure what you mean by PRSA using seeing social media as a "set of tools." A group of us just did a live blog for them (unpaid) at their annual conference and it was a bit more than just tool deployment. I live Twittered most of the sessions and there was a real buzz in some quarters.

http://www.prsaconf07.info

Like many companies that dip their toe in the water with social media, I think that PRSA will progress in this area over the very short term.