How corporate software disguised as social networks
The term “social media” seems so simple and straightforward. It would seem - here are the social networks, here are the blogs - that's all. For many, this concept ends with “Vkontakte” and LiveJournal, while platforms that fall under the definition of social are both beloved GMail and unloved ICQ.
Corporate software is gradually becoming a “social media”. Task managers, CRM systems not only “move to the clouds” (that is, they are partially or fully stored and work on external servers, and not in a separate room in the company's office), but also actively implement functionality borrowed from social networks. .
When most office workers spend time in Vkontakte (we have) or Facebook (theirs), it is more profitable for a company to tailor its tools to the habits of employees. This wave was picked up by both large developers of enterprise-software (like IBM with its Lotus Live ), and more modest developers. But the fact remains: familiar to many working tools actively steal ideas from social networks, themselves becoming more and more similar to social and media resources .
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What did the usual social networks take over services seeking to simplify task management or work with clients?
One of the leaders in imitation is quite popular Cubetree . As its creators say, thanks to Cubetree, even those company employees who would not do this under any other conditions will begin to communicate with each other. And indeed: this service is so similar to Facebook that employees will be much more willing to notify each other that lunch has begun or someone has locked himself in the toilet and hasn’t been out for an hour than doing it with “such archaic” email. Cubetree users can post status changes, photos, etc., organize surveys, merge into project groups, set tasks, share documents, work on texts in a wiki format. There are even chats in this system. True, with the ability to “like” posts (mark publications as “liked” with the 'like' link), it seems to me that the authors have overdone, although they could go even further, giving the opportunity to “drown”, like on Digg. You put a task to a person - and he is her "in the minus". Web 2.0, democracy, publicity.
In the direction of active copying, the creators of BantamLive , a relatively fresh product completing beta testing this month, have achieved no less success. Not without reason, his ad was actively displayed on the “main social blog of the world” - Mashable.com: BantamLive offers its users to work with the help of an event tape, which includes virtually any elements - tasks, contacts, calendar events, messages to individual employees and just short messages. Unlike CubeTree, BantamLive is more CRM-oriented: it is very convenient to save customer contacts (which cards include fields for social sites like Twitter and LinkedIn), merge contacts into companies, keep a calendar of meetings, link to meetings and contacts various stages of the transaction, etc. In addition, initially this service tries to integrate with Twitter: by linking your project with a corporate microblog, you can conveniently import from Twitter some of the contact details of those customers for whom this microblog is signed. After exiting the beta, you can expect even tighter integration with external social networks.
In Russia, things are bad with task-management systems as such, not to mention those who began to copy the functionality of social networks to please the habits of company employees and their bosses. Quite good attempts are being made in this direction by Qtrack , a service that has recently increasingly appeared in reviews of various blogs. QTrack borrowed classic forum threads from traditional social media: tasks can be discussed by creating comment threads. Fortunately, the matter was not limited to simply copying: within the framework of a single task, you can create hidden branches, which is convenient in discussing work issues. The classification of tasks is also borrowed from the “two-sided” Internet: they are tagged, and not laid out in folders or sections. There is an analogue of "franding" here: those project colleagues who are in discussion with are being immediately added to the user's address book. You do not need to be registered in QTrack to correspond with the participants: all correspondence can be conducted from your mailbox (it’s quite relevant when communicating with a client who you don’t want to drag into your company’s working environment, but you also want to have a centralized correspondence system contact storage). The latter, by the way, resembles the usual viral spread: once the discussion participant once clicks the link at the bottom of the letter, he will immediately get into the system and in return will receive information about his account in it.
This list can be continued (why I actually invite you in the comments). And the fact is obvious: project management systems - both solutions for large enterprises and focused on small workgroups, freelancers, startups - actively mimic under social networks.
* So it is more convenient: popular social networks have proven that their interfaces are quite convenient for active interaction, and there is no reason not to apply their groundwork in work-oriented systems, and not just chatting.
* It’s simpler: it’s easier for employees and company executives to use similar interfaces both on websites for communication and inside work systems.
* So faster: creating a new task manager, the developer does not need to reinvent the bicycle and other vehicles, just take a close look at how forums, blogs, social networks work. How does what people are already actively using.
Corporate software is gradually becoming a “social media”. Task managers, CRM systems not only “move to the clouds” (that is, they are partially or fully stored and work on external servers, and not in a separate room in the company's office), but also actively implement functionality borrowed from social networks. .
When most office workers spend time in Vkontakte (we have) or Facebook (theirs), it is more profitable for a company to tailor its tools to the habits of employees. This wave was picked up by both large developers of enterprise-software (like IBM with its Lotus Live ), and more modest developers. But the fact remains: familiar to many working tools actively steal ideas from social networks, themselves becoming more and more similar to social and media resources .
')
What did the usual social networks take over services seeking to simplify task management or work with clients?
One of the leaders in imitation is quite popular Cubetree . As its creators say, thanks to Cubetree, even those company employees who would not do this under any other conditions will begin to communicate with each other. And indeed: this service is so similar to Facebook that employees will be much more willing to notify each other that lunch has begun or someone has locked himself in the toilet and hasn’t been out for an hour than doing it with “such archaic” email. Cubetree users can post status changes, photos, etc., organize surveys, merge into project groups, set tasks, share documents, work on texts in a wiki format. There are even chats in this system. True, with the ability to “like” posts (mark publications as “liked” with the 'like' link), it seems to me that the authors have overdone, although they could go even further, giving the opportunity to “drown”, like on Digg. You put a task to a person - and he is her "in the minus". Web 2.0, democracy, publicity.
In the direction of active copying, the creators of BantamLive , a relatively fresh product completing beta testing this month, have achieved no less success. Not without reason, his ad was actively displayed on the “main social blog of the world” - Mashable.com: BantamLive offers its users to work with the help of an event tape, which includes virtually any elements - tasks, contacts, calendar events, messages to individual employees and just short messages. Unlike CubeTree, BantamLive is more CRM-oriented: it is very convenient to save customer contacts (which cards include fields for social sites like Twitter and LinkedIn), merge contacts into companies, keep a calendar of meetings, link to meetings and contacts various stages of the transaction, etc. In addition, initially this service tries to integrate with Twitter: by linking your project with a corporate microblog, you can conveniently import from Twitter some of the contact details of those customers for whom this microblog is signed. After exiting the beta, you can expect even tighter integration with external social networks.
In Russia, things are bad with task-management systems as such, not to mention those who began to copy the functionality of social networks to please the habits of company employees and their bosses. Quite good attempts are being made in this direction by Qtrack , a service that has recently increasingly appeared in reviews of various blogs. QTrack borrowed classic forum threads from traditional social media: tasks can be discussed by creating comment threads. Fortunately, the matter was not limited to simply copying: within the framework of a single task, you can create hidden branches, which is convenient in discussing work issues. The classification of tasks is also borrowed from the “two-sided” Internet: they are tagged, and not laid out in folders or sections. There is an analogue of "franding" here: those project colleagues who are in discussion with are being immediately added to the user's address book. You do not need to be registered in QTrack to correspond with the participants: all correspondence can be conducted from your mailbox (it’s quite relevant when communicating with a client who you don’t want to drag into your company’s working environment, but you also want to have a centralized correspondence system contact storage). The latter, by the way, resembles the usual viral spread: once the discussion participant once clicks the link at the bottom of the letter, he will immediately get into the system and in return will receive information about his account in it.
This list can be continued (why I actually invite you in the comments). And the fact is obvious: project management systems - both solutions for large enterprises and focused on small workgroups, freelancers, startups - actively mimic under social networks.
* So it is more convenient: popular social networks have proven that their interfaces are quite convenient for active interaction, and there is no reason not to apply their groundwork in work-oriented systems, and not just chatting.
* It’s simpler: it’s easier for employees and company executives to use similar interfaces both on websites for communication and inside work systems.
* So faster: creating a new task manager, the developer does not need to reinvent the bicycle and other vehicles, just take a close look at how forums, blogs, social networks work. How does what people are already actively using.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/82980/
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