Key Differences Between Social and Collaborative Networks
Aaron Fulkerson explains the key difference between collaborative networks (wikis, enterprise social software) and social networks (Twitter, Facebook) in The Future of Collaborative Networks:
When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network.
This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse. Collaborative Networks will increasingly be critically important to business and organizations by helping to establish a culture of innovation and by delivering operational excellence.
(via Collaboration 2.0)
Larry Irons says:
Aug 18th, 2009
I totally disagree. Collaboration is not just goal oriented, which is what the quote implies. Collaborations requires people, employees, call them whatever you want, to voluntarily share information with others, whether those others are on their teams or not. People share with one another more effectively when they know them as social persons. You can’t reduce collaboration to goal orientation and expect people to embrace the platforms that make it possible. People share information when they trust others and knowing the “others” as persons, real social people, makes that happen more readily.