High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
www.solutions.dowjones.com
The ConversationalCorporation:
How Social Media is Changingthe Enterprise
eBook
2
At Dow Jones, we spend a lot of time creatingcontent. But we invest as much or more timemanaging content—and helping other enterprisesmaster their own.
So what does it take to develop products and services that comb the Web for relevant information? That assemble
knowledge structures out of the vast brick lots to data? That help seekers of insight nd wisdom—and wise people—inside
and outside of the organization?It takes a lot of listening. A lot of chit-chatting. And a lot of just plain hanging out. Fortunately, I have the privilege of hangingout in Silicon Valley with many of the tech elite, the innovators, visionaries and talking heads who are shaping the way theworld creates and shares information.In fact, this eBook itself arose out of a conversation, a discussion with Robert Scoble about the popularization of enterprisetools generated by the technologies and services that he reviews on his blog, Scobleizer.While Robert and his frequent
collaborator, Shel Israel, may not be the most familiar names in the corporate household, among the Weborati, they are
respected as the leading experts on social media. Their rst book together, “Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changingthe Way Businesses Talk”, introduced blogging to the corporate world. Published in January 2006, Naked Conversationsused more than 50 case histories to explain why blogging is an efcient and credible method of business communication.Coming in at a total of 232 pages, only a few were dedicated to other types of social media that are now driving enterprise
conversations just three years later.As a joint project created by Robert, Shel, Greg Merkle (a Dow Jones colleague) and myself, this eBook extends theconversation even further and brings it deeper into your enterprise. We will look at new ways that your employees are
communicating and collaborating, and discuss their impact on the corporation—particularly on the changing expectations
of your customers and colleagues. We’ll discuss the busy intersection between business and social media, and show you a
“starsh approach” that opens new conversations while capturing the content—and value—every corporation needs.
Finally, we’ll summarize our thoughts in a handy list of tips you can reference immediately. But the conversation doesn’t have
to end: we encourage you to join the discussion on our blogs.
See you there!Daniela BarbosaDow Jones Enterprise MEdia Group
New Generations, New Conversations
What the Web hath wrought...
Something happened in 1991. At the time, it went relatively unnoticed except by the geekiest among us. A computerscientist named Tim Berners-Lee
gured out a way to use the Internet to collaborate with other computer scientists inpreparation for a conference. He called it the World Wide Web and it turned out to be pretty useful in quite a few ways.Our sense is that we ain’t seen nothing yet. The rst children born after the birth of the Web are now applying for college.What will the world look like in three, ve, 10 and 50 years when this next generation graduates college, enters the
marketplace and replaces Boomers in corporate seats?
What does your own company look like?
If you want to understand what is going to happen to your business and just about everything else, there’s a better place to
look than here. There’s better evidence than any crunched data an analyst’s report can give you. Chances are, you havea good market sample in an adjacent bedroom—your own kids. If you listen closely, you can hear them tapping out some
comments to friends in chat rooms, on SMS or in MySpace.We form habits when we are young and we keep a great many of them all our lives. When Shel started college, he discoveredfree copies of The Wall Street Journal in his university commons and it became his lifelong habit to read the paper.When his granddaughter enters college, chances are she’ll have omnipresent Internet access that allows her to get theinformation she wants from whatever sites she wishes.Statistics show that the habits of kids do not include reading newspapers and that they fast-forward their way through ads ontelevision. In fact, according to eMarketer, an online statistical aggregator, they watched between 12% and 21% less TV in2007 than in 2006.Instead of sitting and passively watching, eMarketer estimates that about 95% of U.S. adolescents between the ages of 12 and
17 are active online. Internet activities, particularly interaction with friends, inuence what they buy, watch, listen to, where
they visit, even who they vote for. Their behavior is being determined more by peers than by traditional marketing efforts.
Some 71% use mobile phones. Nearly 60% are registered in at least one social network. One in four of them have theirown blogs and nearly three in four read other people’s blogs. These are astounding gures considering that in 2005,those numbers would probably have ranged from zero to ve percent.
3
Add a Comment