Leveraging Social Computing, sensibly

I’ve just been reading this article from Microsoft’s Midsize Business Center (good place to go for info on how business meets IT and visa versa) and they provide a good 101 on Social computing and how you can make the most of your existing investments in IT (like SharePoint) you can start to use tools like Blogs and Wikis.

When I talk to people who haven’t come across this kind of stuff before they like to draw comparisons to websites.  Whilst that is true, the social aspect is really unlocked by the freestyle nature of how you can publish content.  Take a wiki, it’s a platform that allows rapid content to be delivered on a website but in a way that wasn’t possible before with tradition websites. 

The “social” side comes into play with the way you can share and consume content in a standard way using RSS allowing information to flow freely. 

Technologies like Blogs and Wikis represent opportunities to share information and ideas in better ways but also presents challenges in terms of security important stuff and finding what you need when you want it.

As different platforms mature they will go about addressing these challenges in different ways and as the Microsoft article details, we have taken care of them by leveraging search and security already integrated with SharePoint.

There is a great Social computing page as part of the SharePoint website which has links to some great resources – worth checking out if you’d like more information on this subject.