Many of my readers grew up in a generation where e-mail became common. Some of us might even remember the time when there was no Web or e-mail and communications was done in-person, with paper and/or using the telephone.E-mail has immeasurably increased productivity in the workforce but with e-mail has come a barrage of spam that has made e-mail less efficient.
So if we look to the future of communications in the workplace it is probably logical to look at the next generation of workers to see what they are doing. Recently the Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted a survey of teenagers which should shed some light on how the younger generation communicates.
In the less than surprising category is the fact that nearly 40 percent of teens say they talk to friends on a traditional wired phone every day, and 35 percent say they do so on a cell phone.
In the less than surprising category is the fact that thirty-one percent of teens say they spend time in person with friends every day. Perhaps the reason I am not surprised is because kids go to school and hang out after class, etc.
Even a smaller percentage say they use social networking sites on a daily basis.
E-mail has lost favor among teens. It ranked at the bottom -- used daily by only 14 percent of teens to keep in touch with friends.
Nonetheless, teens who use social-networking sites -- 55 percent of online teens -- consider the virtual hangouts important in their social lives.
Ninety-one percent of the social-networking teens use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently; 82 percent use them to keep contact with those they rarely see in person. Three-quarters use them to make plans, and half say they make new friends there.
A few months back I was at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters and when I toured their “office of the future” I was blown away at how integrated everything was. Workgroups were all accessible online and documents flowed seamlessly throughout the groups of workers and enterprise. Permissions were managed by the system ensuring users only have access t
o information they are allowed to see.
o information they are allowed to see.The point is, it seemed like Microsoft’s vision for the future was really a social networking/wiki backend with a sophisticated user interface on the front end.
While I could easily see using this sort of environment in my daily work I suppose a new generation that seems to have already decided e-mail is second-rate would adapt to such an environment even more quickly.
If you put all these disparate pieces together it seems we can expect social networking to permeate business as workgroups share information and corporate systems manage workflow in a much more efficient manner.
Who will give us this environment? Microsoft? SAP? Google? Will Microsoft purchase Facebook and morph it into a business social networking site?
It seems the next generation of corporate software is easy to predict. What is more challenging and a subject I will be covering more frequently is who the players in the space are today and will be tomorrow. It should be a fun ride.
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