New Ways of Working Network

Social networks and other social media services have emerged as powerful marketing and communication tools. People use these tools to post photos, find old friends and share homemade movies, which leads many to think of this phenomena as a kind of “amateur hour” and not a place to conduct serious business. But social media is powerful – it breaks down barriers of time and place and makes it possible to communicate easily with people you could never have met otherwise.

We’re inundated by daily reports of businesses jumping into this social sphere and dire warnings of waiting to engage. But does the promise of social media match the hype? And does that translate into something worthwhile for business?  We decided to find out.

More specifically, we are interested in how social media will change how we work:
- Can it help us collaborate more effectively? Can it encourage the building of the foundations of effective collaboration, such as trust, identity, etc.
- Can it encourage innovation by enabling the connections of weak ties between people with common interests?
- How is it being used today for these purposes?
- What is being planned for the future?
- What can social media NOT do well with respect to collaboration?
- What more do we have to know about social media to use it effectively for work?

Published November 2010. ©2010 by the New Ways of Working, LLC. This publication may not be copied or transmitted in whole or part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission of the New Ways of Working, LLC.