Social computing has moved from a teenage fad to a mainstream communication and collaboration mechanism today. It is rapidly redefining the way people and businesses communicate. Today, social media is an integral part of any organization's communication strategy. It has become very common for CxOs to communicate with the public through various social media forum. The focus is on two fronts: internal; where organizations leverage social media such as wikis, blogs and corporate social networks to encourage and improve employee interaction. Within an organization, social computing can drive innovation and creativity. The other is external, where organizations harness the power of social computing to foster visibility. The power of social computing comes with several inherent risks, and it is vital that an organization adopts a cohesive and well thought out social computing strategy.
Today's corporate websites feature integrated social media capabilities, such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums along with sharing and bookmarking shortcuts. As a result, companies are able to obtain real time feedback from their customers and partners, as well as integrate and adopt the same in their processes.
A greater cross section of employees is now open to the public via these forum, as compared to the occasional press releases from CEO. This is driving a bottom up innovation, as compared to a traditional top down innovation. Social media helps customers to promote an organizations products as in viral marketing, and this has been proved over and over again as one of the most effective referral mechanisms.
