5 Things Gossip Can Teach Us about Social Business and Collaboration
Online gossip is an enigma. It is easier than ever for users to verify information using a search engine, online reference tools, or even specific web sites such as Snopes.com that are geared toward quelling gossip.
But still gossip persists and continues to be passed along via email and social media. In a 2008 article, Psychology Today outlined 8 ½ reasons why gossip is hard to kill. It is this very “sticky” nature of online gossip that merits us asking the question: What can gossip teach us about social business and collaboration?
- Users give priority to information that is pushed. Information that is in front of you is easier to access than information that you have to find. Even if the search time to find that information is only .23 seconds, if information is pushed, it has priority over information that must be searched for. Add to this the complications of enterprise search (a far cry from a Google-like experience), and pushed information wins every time. In most organizations this pushed information means e-mail today, but it will quickly come to include your social collaboration platforms as well. As online collaboration increases in the business environment, it will be important to understand the priority that users place on information that is given to them as opposed to what they need to go find in a repository or group space.
- The personal trumps Corporate. People have social “pull” with each other that faceless departments or organizations cannot imitate. An email from a friend or co-worker whom you trust will outweigh the company-wide memo or a newsletter blast. Social business communities will respond substantially better to company-wide information if it is disseminated by an actual person rather than by a department.
- Identify expertise. In an online collaboration event, a lot of comments and content can be generated quickly. But we lack editorial knowledge of this content. Depending on how many voices are parts of the conversation, we do not always know who we can trust. This problem is exacerbated by micro blogs, where users are not always easy to identify. Community managers would do well to assign “expert” status to certain users so that their commentary can be elevated.
- Rewards can help clean up the content. Systems that provide a voting mechanism for users to select the best answer can award expertise points and help clean up the slop that is generated during collaboration by elevating knowledgeable or expert answers above the rest. Yahoo! Answers is a good example of this type of environment in a consumer environment. Not only are experts incented to participate, but users can also have faith that the content they are depending upon is valid.
- Sometimes gossip is right. The same Psychology Today article states that 95 percent of the gossip in hierarchical social structures (e.g. a business) is often correct. As social business systems become filled with popular sentiment, community managers could be tracking employee sentiment to harvest the wisdom of the crowd.
First of all, wonderful post! well, so we are looking into two major aspects of collaboration – technology and framefork for successful teamwork. One directly affects another. Taking into consideration the fact that collaboration is a process where people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, a deep collective determination to reach an identical objective must take place, as well as tools to support particular framework accordingly to which organizations plan to achieve those goals. We cannot look at this subject in fragmented manner; it simply will not work this way. Structured tech supported methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and ideal communication processes. Just some stream of consciousness on the semi-related subject.
Edward,
I agree. I think where we can walk on the backs of those who have gone before us is to look at what we know about human communications and collaboration today outside of e2.0 tools and then try to anticipate how the tools can help us use the information from human collaboration better. Thanks for your comment.