Top CIOs talk Social Networking Usage and Policy

Last week I moderated a panel on Social Networking and Media to a group of approximately 50 CIOs at the Global CIO Forum sponsored by Telwares. We covered social networking from a number of perspectives:

• Integrating social networking functionality into products (example, Twitter, LinkedIn like Business Exchange has done or Facebook integration as others have done successfullt)
• Social media/networking used in Marketing and Sales functions - Harrah's reps tweet star findings in their Vegas hotels. Blood Systems uses tweet when blood donors are needed during a crisis. I saw a nice demo of SalesForce Chatter.
• Enterprise 2.0 capabilities - Several examples including a Sharepoint site used to coordinate social media messaging.
• A long discussion on the CIO role in developing social media policies - With some good insight from @MarkSilver.

It turned out to be a lively discussion which I find surprising since there were relatively few consumer oriented company CIOs in the mix. Virtually all the CIOs are on LinkedIn and Facebook, but relatively few participate on Twitter. Nonetheless, the majority of themselves see themselves playing a role enabling this technology if used in constructive ways rather than inhibiting it. 

I'm going to generalize a bit. These CIOs recognize that the current generation of workforce come in with expectations of openness and are well versed in collaboration tools. Although enterprise 2.0 tools may not be high on their project lists, they're not ignoring it either and taking steps opportunistically. When it comes to social media policy, many were in agreement that the real concern is code of conduct issues recognizing that social networking tools just increase the transparency of people's activity. They see HR and Legal taking on the roles of inhibitor and see their participation aiming to explain the technology and to insure an open dialogue. Afterall, all YouTube did is make it easy for someone to post video of 'bad' behavior; the behavior was probably there already just no one saw it. All acknowledged that social platforms were a feeding ground for scavenging legal dirt, so there is a general leadership need in making employees aware of the issues.

All in all, it was a very healthy discussion and a promising sign for those of us who promote proper usage of these tools in the enterprise.