Social Media Departmental Wars

My friend Jeremiah Owyang just tweeted a short while ago how, as an Altimeter Group partner, he often gets called into companies to settle territorial dispute wars on who owns social media.

I find great irony in this, mixed with some humor and sprinkled heavily with amazement at how far and how fast social media has emerged to importance in the enterprise.

Just over five years ago, there was no place for social media in most enterprises. The enterprise, evangelists like me were told, was for serious business, not celebrity siting or lunch menu reports.

Then, social media skunkworks projects were formed. These were under-funded, under-staffed experiments in social media that allowed CEOs to show the company had vision during presentations.

But some of those little skunkworks experiments have exploded. At SAP, for example, the company’s network of communities under Mark Yoltin, now has more than two million customers, partners and employees involved. It is where things happen first for at least a half dozen enterprise departments.

Over at Intuit, the company has used social media to transform its position from from a financial productivity software company into the best-known small business community.

Today, most enterprises see that social media are an extremely important strategic component of their overall business. Social media tools are used by marketing, communications, product development, human resources, and even sales.

The tools of social media, like telephones and email, do not make sense being owned by any one department. They can be used in diverse ways by diverse work groups to get their jobs done better and faster. And along the way, they make customers, partners and employees happier and often more passionate about their work.