New Approaches to Old Problems: Expanding the Universe of Interpersonal Ties with Emerging Internet Applications

By: Andrew Mcafee

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Synopsis: With the advent of Internet connectivity, the tendency to focus only on strongly tied colleagues within enterprises has given way to a broader and more useful perspective. The ability to form, maintain, and exploit more casual ties, and the ability to convert potential ties into actual ones are hugely valuable assets, both to individuals and to the enterprises in which they work. Indeed, many analysts have found that the greatest value of the Web's emergent social software platforms, including blogs, is their ability to connect people-and the information they have to offer-who would otherwise have remained isolated from one another. In this chapter Andrew McAfee dives deep into how interpersonal ties are created and organized on the Web and shows how levels of interaction-from very tight networks to no contact at all-can provide invaluable benefits. He presents four stories-VistaPrint, Serena Software, the U.S. intelligence community, and Google-that vividly illustrate how companies have exploited emergent social software platforms (ESSPs) to use ties between people to solve their most critical problems, from building a healthy corporate culture among far-flung offices to building prediction markets to revolutionizing the sharing of security intelligence. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 4 of "Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges."