Fun: Keeping the Social in Social Media

Social media tools are incredibly valuable for enabling better communications within the enterprise context but they are tools that will always be adopted by the users themselves.  And people used social tools in a purely social context first - whether that was blogging or MySpace or Twitter - because they were fun.

It is fun to connect with others that share the same hobbies, sense of humor, perspectives, friends, etc. The Internet now enables us to connect with even more of those people who add another level of richness to a shared interests. And then you can throw a stapler at them or 'gift' them a jar of Fluff or play a game with them.  That's kind of fun - how else could I play a game with all of my cousins that live in 7 different states?  And playing games connects us in ways emailing can't...because it is hard to have an ongoing, regular conversation with distant friends but fairly easy - and a lot more fun - to play a game with them.

A few of my favorite examples:

• Microsoft Office Poke in Facebook.  Shred documents with your friends, throw a stapler at them, grab coffee together, or 'Leverage Cross-Team Synergies' if you must.  One of the funniest engineers I know built this and it's just fun.
• New York Times Quiz in Facebook. Pit your knowledge of current events against your friends or Facebook members in general.
• Picture of the Day blogs: examples at New York Daily Photo and Budapst Daily Photo
• Microsoft Children's Book: The Stay at Home Server
• Almost anything Ze Frank does.
• The Seesmic guys - I particularly thought this video was funny.

I could go on and on...and the things I find interesting and funny are not the things that will appeal to a lot of other people.  But, if you notice, many of the things that are on my list further a business goal by exposing an idea, provoking a response, or engaging the user.

My point with all of this is that we shouldn't forget the fun when we think about deploying social media applications in the enterprise.  Things to think about:

• Give your effort a strong personality - everyone may not love it but it will provoke engagement
• Surprise people with unexpected content or features
• People like competition and it drives engagement
• People like recognition, giving them recognition will inspire enthusiasts
• People like to personalize their corner of the universe, give them tools to do that

I like to smile and I like when people use humor to make a business point.  This makes me feel better about my work and enjoy the people I work with more.  If I have a positive emotion associated with my work, I will have a sharper recollection of that work and I am more apt to be an active supporter.  Isn't that what we all want in our jobs and in our companies?  People who are happy doing their work?  I would even go so far to say that it is far more productive.  The less resistant people are to new ideas  or initiatives (because it was introduced in an appealing/disarming way), the less work is needed to get everyone going in the same direction.

Comments

[Kim Patrick Kobza]

So Rachel, the point that you are making is very important for several reasons. "Fun" drives discovery and learning. Learning is inherently a social activity. And to take that theme a step further peer to peer learning is sometimes more powerful than learning from experts in a 'broadcast" model.

Another way to look at your proposition is that unstructured communications often provide as much or more value than transactional structured communications - for instance, those that might be aggregated in a CRM system.

Part of the reason for this is that the user actually gets to define what is and isn't important - self segmentation, or audience segmentation.

This is also the reason that surveys are such a failure. They try to control the user, rather than the user driving what he/she believes is the most important and relevant content and feedback.

The one other prism to apply is the importance of building in clear purpose and expectation in engagements. So in business the differentiator might be that an organization's best strategy is not simply to provide a means to make friends, (or aggregate relationships) but to provide a clear business purpose with peer to peer interaction (around which friendships may form). Slightly different but important distinction.

So expanding this theme is very important.

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Kim -

Thanks for the comments - I've been fascinated with storytelling recently as I am starting to believe that is the most effective way to communicate in a way that is memorable because they imbue learning with emotion - and they are social.