Sunday, December 05, 2010

Can IBM Compete With Facebook In Social Media? - Work in Progress - Forbes

Via Ed Brill – a convenient summary of the meticulously choreographed (by IBM marketing/corp comm/PR and close-orbit partners) conventional wisdom about IBM’s intra-company collaboration modus operandi.  My answer to the article title question: IBM successfully competing with Facebook in social media is roughly as likely as IBM OS/2 being resurrected as a popular consumer operating system platform.  IBM is effectively leveraging social media for some internal activities, e.g., coordinating IBM Services engagements, but the related IBM software products/services (e.g., LotusLive) are, at this point, relevant primarily to large and excessively conservative IT organizations that want to continue believing the fallacy about nobody getting fired for buying IBM offerings. 

This is not the first time IBM was using a tool internally long before the rest of the world – e-mail, instant messaging, and intranet technologies were all used internally within IBM long before they were even given names. They arose out of the necessity to be connected. They were – and are – the basis for what we now call social media tools.

So, is IBM likely to compete with Facebook in the social media market?

Can IBM Compete With Facebook In Social Media? - Work in Progress - Career talk for women - Forbes

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