Antonio Thonis

Here is the second part of a serie of blogposts where I present the research and findings of my Social Media & Business thesis. Again I hope you comment and share your views. In the end I will make a pdf available and we might even have updated sections based on the comments!

Internal enterprise use of social media.

The social aspects of social media that allow the collecting and sharing of collective intelligence among the social media platforms users can be used by organizations to internally collect, retain and share information. The web 2.0 structure and technologies can also be used for easier communication and collaboration in organizations.

Brzozowski et al. (2009) write about the internal use of social media at Hewlett-Packard (HP). Social media provides a free broadcast platform that allows authors to circumvent traditional organizational hierarchies and reach organizationally distant readers. [...]

In August I finished my bachelor thesis called “The alignment of web 2.0 and social media with business strategy”. I wrote it as part of my Business Administration study with the Information Management department. In this research I focused on using IT and organization literature to fill the academic gaps on social media literature. I researched the definitions of social media and web 2.0 and how these can be used by organizations. The main focus was to find an answer to how organizations can align their use of social media (or social software) with their business strategy. To in the end realize more effective investments.

Here is the first part of a serie of blogposts where I present the the research and findings of my Social Media & Business thesis. I hope you’ll comment and share your views on the material. In the end I will make a pdf available and we might even have updated sections based on comments/discussions! [...]

Another overview of study material which I had to read, this time for the Knowledge Management (KM) course. KM covers many subjects as knowledge sharing, social networks, social capital and communities of practice. More about these subjects and my views on them in later blogposts!

The book from Hislop offers an good overview of the KM field, it’s developments and a critical view on KM. Knowledge Management in Organizations: a critical introduction, Hislop D. (2005), Oxford University Press

The list of  Knowledge Management academic papers:

• Keeping the Wheels Turning: The Dynamics of Managing Networks of Practice, Marlous Agterberg et al., Journal of Management Studies 2009
• Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks, Rob Cross et al., Organizational Dynamics Vol. 30  2001 [...]

One great way to create continues buzz around your startup is to release private beta invites in multiple phases. Startups often choose to do this at big events in collaboration with media partners to generate publicity and attract new users. The feeling of exclusivity of the participants will motivate influentials to sign up and hopefully write about your company. A good example of this has been the madness surrounding the Google Wave invites.

There are a few problems which startups seem to face in the process of rolling out invitations. In the case of Google Wave many people with an invite discovered they had non of their friends on the service to interact with. This is not beneficial for the user experience of your new service. Another problem is [...]

This monday I attended the fifth edition of Social Strategy Talk on eParticipation and Open Data. Different Dutch projects presented their work and findings. Even some eParticipation and Open Data projects from the UK presented their cases.

One of the biggest eParticipation projects in The Netherlands is AiAmsterdam which was formed in a response to the local government that then had prohibited drinking while standing in Amsterdam. The online and offline movement has more members than many politicle parties in our country, showing the power of the social web as a ‘shortcut to democracy’. Currently they are planning their next big secret project. [...]

The Amsterdam Antwerp Challenge is a local business plan competition which’s main goal is to stimulate innovation and international entrepreneurship in this region. By submitting a 100 word startup idea you can win some of the price money or even the possibility to pitch at the finals.  I’ve used this opportunity to put one of the news service concepts I’ve been thinking about on paper:

Currently newspapers struggle with innovation, many seems only to focus on digitalizing their news product while not offering real new value to the readers.
I believe newspaper should add services to their product instead of just digitalizing their product. [...]