In a comment, Neil Burton of Web Spiders picks up on my rhetorical question why would I want my employer to own my social graph? by asking
In this case [an enterprise social networking tool provided by the company] is your social graph actually intellectual property of the company? would a company who gave you a tool want you to use the benefits of this when moving to another organisation (who could be a competitor)?
I can certainly see Neil’s point, indeed in pre-Web 2.0 days a whole body of law has grown up around the use of contact lists etc. that one has accumulated through the course of carrying out a job. I don’t know if there is any relevant case law that brings this up to date…
On the other side of the coin, as an individual I clearly feel that the information about my connections to other people (i.e. my relationships to other people) is absolutely my information. Even if the means of expressing and sharing that information belongs to an employer or a third party like LinkedIn or Facebook.
Perhaps there is a lesson for employers from the situation with “public” social networking sites. Clearly sites have a business proposition around “monetising” the network (aside – we so have to find a better verb!) that users create. In return we accept (or put up with) that because of the benefits we perceive from sharing our connections. The sites have to make their proposition attractive or else there will be no network and no money. The analogy within an organisation would be the organisation investing in the tools in order to benefit from a more effective workforce, giving the users the benefits they perceive.
In all cases the underlying tension is between a closed network and an open one. For users open networks or the ability to transfer their information from one system to another is a key benefit. For employers the typical initial reaction will be similar to Neil’s – if this gives us an advantage we want to keep it in house. My feeling is that this analysis springs in part from assuming the social graph is like a list of contact details – information that can be of value to anyone.
Looking deeper though, I think a better analogy would be to think of a person’s social graph as if it was part of their training and development record. Just because two people have been on the same course they do not necessarily have the same skills. Just because two people both express a relationship to me via a networking site that does not make our working relationships equivalent. Human relationships are not fungible.
So if a free market in “labour” is of benefit to the firm, and if the effectiveness of a workforce is enhanced by the use of tools that can express relationships, then surely an advantage for such network sharing systems must be the ease with which the information is imported, exported and shared?
There’s a lot to develop here, and some people have already been paying attention to it. This article by Alex Iskold would seem to be a good starting summary, pointing as it does to Brad Fitzpatrick’s post Thoughts on The Social Graph.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:35
It is an interesting point around control. In some ways it maps to what has happened in lots of industries where a broker of some sort controls the flow. Music industry, bands and consumers and record labels, book publishers etc. In all these we have seen that unless the broker is providing some real value they will be bypassed by the conenctions people can now make directly with the rest of the world.
In a labour market, an employer provides a degree of safe haven, protection even. Increasingly though people are able to be their own companies and form their own associations. Of course this has always been the case, but now its easier to work globally in niche areas.
The attempt to control and claw in a social graph of an employee seems to be a knee jerk reaction. I really cannot see where it is possible to draw the line between pure work and pure social. Likewise I cannot see how it woudl be OK for ‘employees’ to have their network owned by a set of “bosses” who were able themselves to network freely at the golf club out in the open.
As Gaping Void’s cartoon says “All control is damage control”
March 13th, 2008 at 16:55
It seems clear to me that, to date, if you work for a company, it will “own” your social graph by and large.
As epredator says above, the line is blurring, and I believe it will continue to do so. It hearkens back to Peter Drucker’s point in an article titled “Beyond The Information Revolution” in which he noted that increasingly the “knowledge workers own the means of production”
As they realize this more and more, or get turfed out of jobs through redundancy, or move for better opportunities, they weill carry their social graph with them.
It points to ongoing changes (notably to employment relationships and organisational structures) in a world where a significant proportion of workers will be in information and knowledge based roles.
At some point, probably as you gain experience, move through various roles and employers, and obtain a wider, deeper and more mature social graph, you as a knowledge worker start to “own” it.
March 14th, 2008 at 09:15
Thanks to both for your comments.
Jon – I think you are spot on in the trends you mention – and two things you have blogged lately support that – Charlene Li’s recent post and the news about Yahoo and OpenSocial
epredator – agree that it is increasingly impossible to divide “pure work” and “pure social” – in fact if you want employees to network effectively even within the organisation then you have to recognise the importance of social bonds of various sorts.