If you must have in-house social tools, go with SharePoint

I’ve spent the past week working with and deploying the various social networking tools in SharePoint 2010. It’s jam-packed with everything from individual blog sites and profiles to simple I Like It and Tags & Notes options at the top of every page. Microsoft believes that by adding these features, IT can keep folks on its intranet and thus increase communication and collaboration within an organization.

Social networking: A promise that may not deliver That may be true of some companies, but not all. The fact is, there are only three ways social networking tools will be used within your organization if you deploy them.

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1. They’ll be ignored due to lack of desire to share info with fellow employees. People already post things to their personal blog or to their “real” friends on Facebook, so they won’t participate in the artificial community at work. Another reason they’ll be ignored is lack of training and people’s fear of playing with new tools.
2. They’ll be abused, at least partially. I recently worked with a tool called Yammer, an internal messaging tool hosted online. People use it for company communication 80 percent of the time. Other times, it’s all in fun, like debating favorite superheroes and so on. There is nothing wrong with having a little fun, of course. But time is money, and the more social networking tools you provide, the more time it requires to keep up with them. There is also the concern that inappropriate items might be posted to company blogs and message boards simply because that is what a person may do at home with their personal social networking.
3. It will be used to promote collaboration among colleagues and actually improve company performance and productivity.

Typically, I’d mock the third option, and I had a chance to do so when meeting with a member of the Microsoft SharePoint development team last year to view various social networking features. But I was mildly made more open-minded when the developer told me he’d learned of a colleague’s project that ordinarily he wouldn’t have known about, thanks to its mention on SharePoint as part of a general request for help. This developer took a look, figured out what was needed, and aided his colleague.

I grant you that, depending on your company culture and the nature of your work, having an internal, open means of collaborating could be an excellent thing. At other times, it could just be a huge time-waster.

Who decides if social tools will actually help? Obviously network administrators and those in decision-making positions in the company need to determine if these tools will be a benefit and not a hindrance. Keep in mind that once you deploy them — assuming people actually use them — you’ll be hard-pressed to take them away without a fight. Social networking is addictive; perhaps you’ve noticed that with people tweeting and Facebooking all over the place.

How to set up social networking in SharePoint The good news, at least from the SharePoint perspective, is that you have a tremendous amount of control over the amount of information people can share. For example, by deploying the User Profile Service Application in a SharePoint server farm, you can deploy My Sites and My Profile options to your users. They can then enter their own profile information, upload images of themselves for a profile picture, create a personal page with a document library (both personal and shared), tag other people’s sites and information, and search for people within the organization based on their profiles.

The SharePoint administrator can control the extent to which the sharing occurs. You can adjust the properties in the profile page, turning options on or off and adding new properties if needed. You can turn off the I Like It and Tags & Notes features, and you can even delete tags or notes your corporate policy disapproves of. You can access profile information and make changes if needed. And you don’t have to turn on My Sites or let people create their own blog and so on: It’s not an all-or-nothing situation with these tools (ditto with third-party tools).

Let’s be honest: Communication features are heralded to the community, but control features sell an administrator looking to deploy the product.

If you are looking at using social networking tools in-house, it’s always good to provide training and ground rules. Training will help people feel more comfortable with the new tools, while ground rules will keep them out of trouble. Expectations should also be set in terms of how much time should be spent with these tools. You can’t always tell when someone is chewing up company hours with social networking, so make sure they know where the line is (more or less).

What is the value again? I’m not a fan of social networking tools at work. I believe it distracts people more than it provides value. Call me a dinosaur, but when I want to say something important to the entire company, I use this ancient system called email. Maybe I’m not a team player because I don’t like collaborating on documents; if I need your help on a document, I’ll email it to you and you can look it over.

And don’t get me started on posting pictures and employee blogs. I need to read another employee blog like I need a hole in the head. As for pictures, I’m already overwhelmed by my family’s and friends’ photos on Facebook, now I have to see my colleagues’ shots of their weekend BBQ? As people waste their time clicking through the latest vacation snapshots to see their coworkers’ funny, cool, sexy (at work!) pictures and waste more company time and money?

Call me a grandpa fuddy-duddy but I say, “Get back to work!” If you need a mental break, go get a cup of coffee and talk to your coworkers in person.

What do you think about social networking tools at work?

This article, “If you must have in-house social tools, go with SharePoint,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of J. Peter Bruzzese’s Enterprise Windows blog and follow the latest developments in Windows at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.