So there's such a thing as Micro-Blogging. Just when some of you are getting used to blogging, whether personal or professional, now more and more people are Micro-Blogging. This is embodied in services like Twitter, I can be found here http://twitter.com/bwatters. Most of it is mundane, and lots personal, but some is professional. And this got me to thinking about Micro-Blogging in the Small and Medium Sized business. The other day I read a nice Blog post / pseudo article / white paper on Micro-Blogging in the enterprise. So here are some thoughts on the matter. Micro-Blogging is out there. Its status updates, its letting people know snippits of info in a loose format, consumable on my time, not n theirs. Some of it is stuff that heretofore was put out in Memo or Blog or announcement or IM or the corporate standard, email. Is Micro-Blogging a replacement, I doubt it, but it is a great way to disseminate information and to let others digest it. By its very nature it is designed to be small, and quick and to the point.
For a small business, one could leverage existing services like Twitter, but that is a public service, and while some security measures are in place, it is not at all considered SECURE for groups and the such. A service like Twitter is better for your public face. Maybe a public announcement or public thoughts could go out there. Not necessarily 'orchestrated' but certainly not sensitive data…So then internally, a Small Business could leverage their SharePoint Intranet for such a service. It's achievable, and searchable, and secure within the intranet and corporate policies. I have built integrated Twitter WebParts for a couple of clients and internal use, and am working on a 'Shatter' service (SharePoint + Twitter = Shatter) if you come up with something better let me know, but please shy away from the obvious, that's dull and predictable…With the other Web 2.0 and social networking aspects of sharepoint, tied with the business applications, workflow, search, and whatnot, it makes for the perfect platform for an ever changing corporate brain, and Micro-Blogging while not the only solution, is a big part of merging the knowledge in the 'knowledge workers' brain with the corporate knowledge repository…