How Many Social Platforms We Need for Enterprise?

I think, we are all crazy about a “social computing” topic. Social marketing, social communication, social platform, social content… Few latest announcements last week drove me to some thoughts about Social Platforms in enterprise. Salesforce.com announced Chatter – new social platform for enterprise on their Dreamforce 2009 conference. Almost at the same time, Dassault Systems presentated Social Innovation on European Customer Conference in Paris.

The question I asked myself what is going on around social platforms? How many of such we need? We thrilled by Facebook and Twetter. In parallel, we can see attempts like Yammer to replicate Twitter’s success for the enterprise place. At the same time, big platform providers like IBM and Microsoft are playing with social collaborative musculature of their offering. Finally enterprise vendors get involved and introduced their social platforms. I see Chatter and DS Social innovation are only two examples from last week.

Salesforce.com Chatter Product
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3-pEDst3uk]

Dassault Social Innovation in Plain English.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXHxz0oVWTA]

So, where we are going? Multi-platform social chaos?  I figured out few issues that in my view important to keep in mind looking on multiple social platform efforts.

1. Personal Identification in social networks. We have accounts everywhere – Facebook, twitter, corporate networks etc. As soon as we move towards multiple platforms personal identification becomes more and more important. Interesting directions could be adoption of FOAF or any other potential standardization in this area. How many of you have Google Profile? I created one, but still looking how I can benefit that outside of Google’s world.

2. Content security. Share content in social networks is important and dangerous at the same time. How we can control content shared in social networks? What will be a possible solution for content sharing in enterprise social networks as well as in mixed social networks?

3. Productivity. No doubt social networks brought a lot of advantages. However, how efficiently balance between benefits and disturbing? How I can measure productivity impact from social networks. This is another “interesting problem” in my view.

I’m sure, you enjoyed videos and looking forward to your comments.

Best, Oleg