Social network as context

After reading Josh Miller's post Tenth Grade Tech Trends, a few thoughts went through my mind.  First one was a validation that there will continue to be fragmented social networking services.  Second one was the reason for plethora of social networks had a lot to do with the context that users assign.  In other words the narrative that users tell their friends when describing how the network should be used.  I've been calling it context.  Third one was that even though existing social networks copy the feature set of a new network, it's difficult to break the mold established by user's earlier narrative.

Let me elaborate on each.

Fragmented enterprise collaboration tools

A: “What collaboration tools do you use?"

B: “We have Sharepoint for corporate policies and HR; Connections for product team; Jive for product marketing team; Github for engineering team; and some teams are using Yammer.  Oh, we also have Salesforce Chatter for sales team, and our marketing team is active on Facebook Page, Twitter, LinkedIn and Wordpress blog.”

I have been asking people who work at enterprise to name their collaboration tools.  The answer is almost always not one tool, but multiple collaboration tools.  I then ask if they have a plan to unify and agree on single collaboration tool.  Again the answer is almost always no.

Clearly it's counter-intuitive to have separate islands of collaboration tools.  Collaboration tool, by definition, is meant to make communication and working together easier among team members.  Instead of using multiple tools segregating users, it makes much more sense for an organization to choose one tool where everyone can be available.  More users will create network effect, and collaboration tool will be that much more valuable.

But that's not the reality.  Why is this the case?

Fragmented communication channels

My wife wrote an email to me saying she was concerned that we have communications issues. I immediately sent an IM asking her to clarify. She messaged me on Facebook saying not to worry but that sometimes we're not as connected as she'd like. I tweeted her that I love her more than anything. She texted me that she loves me too and was tired after a long day of work. So I leaned over and kissed her good night.
- Brian Babin, Senior Director of Product Manager at Actiance

If you are on any number of social network, I'm sure you can relate to Brian's story.  Especially roughly half of U.S. population who own smartphone will know.  We use different communication channels to talk to different people.  We use email to correspond to get promotions from companies, Facebook to keep up with friends and family, LinkedIn to maintain our virtual Rollerdex of business contacts, Twitter to get and share breaking news in real time, and Pinterest to discover and express yourself with photos.

Not so uncommon in today's world...