The Difference Between Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media

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Recently in a phone interview I was asked about the difference between the two subjects in the title. I thought to myself, I have answered this many times, but it would be just so much easier to write my answer and then have it available to anyone who reads my blog or is searching for the answer. Not to mention, putting frequently asked questions in a blog post or a wiki page is usually one of my solutions I offer to someone if they keep having to answer the same question or relay the same information more than twice. So I thought I should heed my own advice.

Simply put its internal vs. external, two different parts, that work separately, but should work together. See my breakdown below for more differences:

 

Enterprise 2.0 Web 2.0 /Social Media
Internal Facing External Facing
Firewall Open to the world
Business Social
knowledge capture sharing random things
wiki, blog, social bookmarks, chat social networks and “cool interactive” websites
productivity & efficiency time-suck
reduction of email email producer
collaboration 67 comments on fark

OK I put some things in there for levity as I am biased for the Enterprise 2.0 side of the house. The reason, I think organizations should think internally before claiming they get it on the Internet. You may look cool by having a social media presence to get new recruits and new hires. But if you do not have a productive and collaborative environment behind the firewall, you are NOT going to retain the young bright minds to take your organization into the future.

Also, I didn’t know about the existence of this video, of someone I practically consider a mentor in the business and thinking end of all things Enterprise 2.o. I think Andy eloquently speaks on the differences in what he has noticed in the the past 2 and a half years.

Andrew McAfee – What is Web/Enterprise 2.0

My simple advice is this if you are a business organization, your Enterprise solution should be in communication with your social media strategy. If you are public organization, who has or hires a marketing team, you should be in control of your brand presence on the internet. You should NOT outsource this. For Government organizations, this position for brand management should be part of your Office of Public Affairs or equivalent. The persons working on this external presence for your organization, should also be a part of the enterprise solution for internal collaboration. The internal collaboration, the Enterprise 2.0 platform your organization leverages to communicate between employees is paramount to the growth of the organization.

  • http://www.itsinsider.com susan scrupski

    Hi Andrea. I’ve pondered this myself. You might find a chart http://bit.ly/5GSV I created to delineate the differences in some of these 2.0 popular labels. It’s probably time to revisit this. Thanks for your post.

  • http://www.pretzellogic.org Sameer Patel

    Hi Andrea
    Good post. This is certainly how the engagement model has been broken up in the past and is a good primer on social software uses.

    My personal opinion is that this distinction of internal vs external is becoming more of a limitation. At best, its a risky lens as organizations chart out what the next generation of doing business is going to look like.

    Take for example sales intelligence. The notion of critical insight is just as likely to show up on a enterprise powered customer facing product blog, rich with customer comments, as it would from an ERP system or an internal Wiki. Increasingly the distance between a sales rep and the prospect is shrinking and in many cases, sales wants marketing to get out of the way. There are similar examples for product development, customer service, etc.

    Sure, specific examples are clearly delineated (e.g. DellOutlet on Twitter) where its purely outward facing. But when you consider enterprise efficiency (what you have on the left), one can risk getting dangerously myopic if you consider your universe to be behind the firewall, efficiency focused, etc.

    The good news is the Enterprise 2.0 services are recognizing this. For instance, SocialCast is folding in relevant discussions on Facebook and Twitter into what was previously a closed internal employee communication loop.

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  • http://www.seekomega.com MArk Fidelman

    I believe what you describe is similar to what Aaron Fulkerson described as a collaborative network. He wrote a popular post on this subject here: http://ostatic.com/blog/the-future-of-collaborative-networks

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  • http://radical-inclusion.com/ Lucy Garrick

    Hi Andrea: Thanks for the thought provoking comparison about the differences between Enterprise and Web. 2.0

    Maybe it’s just the way you interpret web 2.o, but once you get past closed and open, you are making a lot of generalizations that are not entirely factual. There is some truth but not the whole truth, which is unfortunate because it tends to reinforce mis-information and put businesses that are closed at a disadvantage.

    I’m not sure when this post was made but there are many things in your left column happening in social media and the fact that most traditional organizations are used to control and closed systems may become a major disadvantage to them. Seems like this is one case where the big players are more out of touch than in touch with what is possible.