Business Goes Virtual – Chapter 2: The New Face(book) of Organizations

The second post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 2: The New Face(book) of Organizations” and how businesses are using social technology to interact with their customers, but also how users are also being empowered by it.

Groundswell

The power behind the groundswell concept is that suddenly everyday people have unparalleled power, especially people that gather together and create communities (see http://www.forrester.com/groundswell). But what has changed to empower these communities with such power? Surely groups of passionate people have long yearned for the opportunity to influence or perhaps even hijack issues. Of course, there have been many times in history when large groups congregated to spark change. However, the logistics with massing large groups can be very cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to communicate.

Enter Web 2.0— a World Wide Web based on collaboration rather than content— and suddenly all these obstacles evaporate, at least for virtual groups. In their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, authors Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams describe how a low- cost collaborative infrastructure is empowering the many— they term these “the weapons of mass collaboration.” Tapscott and Williams warn that these weapons support a new level of collaboration that will turn the economy upside down and may well facilitate the destruction of organizations who fail to adjust.

(Pg 23)

The 2011 Egyptian revolution was facilitated by the use of social media websites Twitter and Facebook to co-ordinate and to organize the protests, thus increasing local and global awareness. Because of this “Twitter Revolution”, the now ousted Hosni Mubarak at the time believed that shutting off the internet would stifle the rebellion. (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/whats-going-on-in-egypt_n_815734.html)

Events like these (including the protests in Libya), are a prime examples of how powerful Web 2.0 can be. Social media has given the power back to the public and stripped organizations and even political parties of theirs. How has social media empowered you as a person, consumer, etc.?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:
PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know