Blair Pleasant posted last week at Unified Communications Strategies Community Blog and I couldn’t help but notice the integration of unified communications and social media. She makes the case that many people have misconceptions about social software, assuming that it’s just about telling people what you ate for lunch, when in reality, it’s an extremely useful business tool. It’s more than just chatting with friends or letting your “followers” know what you did over the weekend. Tools such as social bookmarking, content tagging, wikis, blogs, and microblogs let workers participate in communities where they can build expertise and share knowledge.
Social networking and unified communications each have inherent value, but are even more powerful when we can blend social software nonsynchronous communication tools (such as wikis and blogs) with UC’s synchronous communications capabilities (such as click to connect). Integrating unified communications with social software lets workers better network with peers within the organization, identify and connect with experts within the company, collaborate on projects, and help workers feel connected.
The fact that IBM is seriously playing in this space is great news since they’ll most likely focus on the enterprise market and the SME/SMB marketplace will naturally follow.