Social media tools (intranet 2.0 tools) are exploding in popularity: the Intranet 2.0 Global Study has found that 87% of organizations have at least one social media tool on the intranet. The most popular tool: blogs (present on 55% of intranets of all sizes). However, blogs have only been deployed enterprise wide (available to all [...]

“Toby, I just wanted to phone you and thank you for your article on Employees demand a clean home page, no scrolling,” says John, an intranet manager with a very large, prominent government organization. “It’s what I’ve been saying all along… but they (some executive types) won’t listen!” The problem with designers, not all designers, [...]

(SAN ANTONIO, TX) Your employees demand a clean, white home page, with absolutely no scrolling. This is a fact, supported by dozens of employee focus groups, at dozens of leading, and medium size organizations in North America. I’ve heard the argument too many times, by too many pundits and design and usability experts, that there [...]

Blogging is more than popular, it’s revolutionary. Blogging has turned ordinary Joe and Janes into celebrated authors, and celebrities. However, for every Arianna Huffington, there are millions of Joes and Janes that have contributed one or two posts and subsequently never return again to the blogosphere, hundreds of millions that will never try blogging. Consider [...]

From mundane to social: intranets are rapidly evolving into social media systems that greatly distance themselves from their former, glorified brochure-ware sites. To be clear, for those still learning about a concept that has really only emerged in recent months, and was only formally defined this year (see The Social Intranet white paper), a social intranet incorporates multiple social media tools that [...]

The vast majority of organizations that have implemented social media tools on their intranet (intranet 2.0 tools) have done so at little or no cost (or simply activated bundled tools that came with SharePoint or another CMS or portal solution). There are dozens of free license, open source solutions that can be downloaded for free, [...]

I’ve been labeled  a “SharePoint hater” by more than one SharePoint consultant. I snicker to myself every time I think of it :) The truth: I like SharePoint; I use SharePoint; SP powers our own intranet at Prescient Digital Media. SharePoint is not everything for everybody and is not a good fit for all organizations. [...]

Intranet 2.0 is cheap. It's so cheap that small organizations, non-profits, miserly Fortune 500 types, and even cash-strapped communications departments can afford it. The results may not always be spectacular, but the cost of entry is rather cheap.   Final results from the the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (525 organizations of all sizes from across [...]

I’m quite certain that no one has outstripped by voracious capacity to write about intranet governance, but at the risk of repeating myself, here’s another recommendation: social intranets need governance too.   Duh.   Actually, if you already have a governance model in place, and a social media policy, then your work is likely done. [...]

A few footnotes and suggestions for supporting intranet social media (intranet 2.0): Folksonomy – a folksonomy is surprisingly simple to implement (or begin); it’s far less advanced that you’d believe, and requires far less set-up than a taxonomy. But most organizations could benefit from both. For a folksonomy, all you need to do is give [...]