Infographic Social Business value example BLOG versus eMail

Blog versus eMail for Communication

Infographics are a great way to tell a story and explain how things work togehter (or not). „Gartner“ say’s that 80% of companies will fail their Social Business goals by 2015 by the reason „CEO commitment“. But why would they not want their people to work smarter?

In my eyes it is like when Internet came up – everyone had the feeling „we need it“ – but only very little had a vision, an idea or even a clear example, what the benefits are.

So it is not on the CEOs – it is on the „early adopters“, consultants and experts to SHOW the VALUE of using social business.

Well here is my contribution in one example – and please don’t judge me on my poor „infographic skills“ – it is my first one 😉

Now I would love to get your opinion of course – is this convincing, or not „good enough“, not relevant….

and yes, there is quite some other things to keep in mind and learn – as I mentioned it is „one“ example and it needs a strategy and a network of great people as role models… but I think this is another story 😉

MerkenMerken

Beitragsinfo:

Published:

21. November 2013

Edited:

26. November 2017

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20 Antworten

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Alexander Kluge

6. Februar 2015

Thanks for sharing this info graphic! Added it so some internal social business sites at my clients and linked that back to you.
It is the simple things that explain the value of social collaboration, and the „reply-to-all“ tsunami is one of that things…

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1. haraldschirmer
  
  11. Februar 2015
  
  Thanks @Alexander, sharing starts with giving something – and I get plenty back – so feel free!
  
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Jacqueline

12. Dezember 2014

I love your email vs blog „story“ – so true

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1. haraldschirmer
  
  22. Dezember 2014
  
  Thx a lot – in the end when sometimes looks so simple… there is a bigger history of less helpful approaches 😉
  
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Paul Fernhout

25. Mai 2014

This infographic seems accurate as far as it goes, but I feel it is still a bit misleading because it leaves out some important things. To begin with, it would be good to also calculate more precisely the amount of time actually spent by everyone involved in reading or rereading related text, rather than just count email copies. Assuming every team member needs to read the entire discussion at some point, then there is not much reading time saved if any. With blogs everyone’s blog may be laid out differently and also cluttered with sidebars and such. In that sense, the amount of information to be processed reading blogs may be *higher* than with email because of the extraneous navigational information on blog pages. Also, the blog may have to be checked periodically to see if there is something new, and that then becomes wasted time.

Blogs require me to use software others supply to get at the information or to add to it. With email I use one familiar program focused on creating and processing messages. Everyone’s blog may require different search tools to search (or have none at all). Contrast that with one standard way to search your local email.

If the blog gets deleted eventually, then the content is lost; with email, there are eleven copies of the content. Email can be backed up all at once by each person; who is backing up the blogs? Email gives you great flexibility on who you send a message to for creating adhoc groups focused on specific issues. With email, the question could even be eventually forwarded to anyone anywhere with email access; the blog may not be available to anyone outside the workgroup or company. Many companies may consider difficulty of forwarding information to the outside world or keeping a local copy to be a benefit, of course — but such restriction on information flow or accessibility may not be good for society or the individual worker.

Email has lots of problems. These include how email messages are often quoted in reverse order with „top posting“ which makes it hard to join such a conversation later. Spam is a big problem. The lack of tools in email to easily do „like“ voting or other polling is another issue. Blogs are indeed better at all these things.

But email has good features too. Your personal email client program can filter and organize all this social information in a way you prefer, including local tagging for prioritization. That is not so easy to so with blogs, although RSS feeds help (but in some sense by becoming a lot more like email pulling in everything from a feed and sorting it). If the question had a good subject, people might be able to ignore the entire thread in an email client unless some keyword trigger prioritization in a filter. Consider your points on „Flexibilisation & Individualization“ in another post; what is more flexible or individual that having my own email client on my own local computer to process social messages to fit my own priorities and workflow?

I’m not going to argue email is perfect. It is not. It is very flawed. Spam is a big problem. As Paul Jones says, machines generate much email but people sort the email, and that is a big problem. Paul Jones makes a good case for email going away in his recent Robert Ballard lecture mentioned here (where I also commented):
http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/noemail-anonymity-and-tor

But the good decentralized local flexible features of email are being lost with a lot of centralized social media. That is why I feel something like a „Distributed Social Semantic Desktop“ is a better future for social media. From:
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Desktop
„For example, sending a single file to a mailing list multiplies the cognitive processing effort of filtering and organizing this file times the number of recipients – leading to more and more of peoples‘ time going into information filtering and information management activities. There is a need for smarter and more fine-grained computer support for personal and networked information that has to blend the boundaries between personal and group data, while simultaneously safeguarding privacy and establishing and deploying trust among collaborators. … The use of ontologies, metadata annotations, and semantic web protocols on desktop computers will allow the integration of desktop applications and the web, enabling a much more focused and integrated personal information management as well as focused information distribution and collaboration on the Web beyond sending emails.“

We are not there yet. NEPOMUK was one step in the right direction. Google Wave was another. We need better standards and better free implementations of such new ideas that are easy to use. We need the best of *both* blogs and email.

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ремонт квартир

22. April 2014

great analysis. very informative

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Florence Kiff

10. Dezember 2013

This is excellent. As a knowledge manager, the main resistance I get from people when I propose new systems, processes, social media, SharePoint etc., is that they simply don’t have the time! What on earth makes people think we want to given them more work to do? We’re simply trying to help staff be more efficient, effective and transparent, and ensure our valuable knowledge is shared across the organisation. I’ve shared this link on our organisational Yammer account here at Plan International in the UK (we do international development work in over 60 countries with over 9,000 staff, currently with a huge focus on the Philippines)- Let’s hope this helps to get the message across. Keep it up – please do more. 🙂 All the best Florence

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1. haraldschirmer
  
  11. Dezember 2013
  
  Thanks a lot Florence – Social Business/Enterprise 2.0 will be more and more important – in my eyes we can only (or at least much faster) succeed together – sharing our best practices and lessons learned.
  We as humans have to start with a „empty“ brain – with the power of sharing at least here – we are more advanced and can learn from each other – not stepping in the same traps or doing it right the first time.
  Good luck for your actions !!
  
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Rainer Gimbel

25. November 2013

Brilliant infographic. Thanks for sharing!

This makes the benefits of using these new tools so transparent and obvious!

I would have used a forum instead of a blog but who cares?

Would it be ok to share this graphic on our internal company plattform? 🙂

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1. haraldschirmer
  
  25. November 2013
  
  @Rainer Gimbel, yes, you can use it, and thanks!
  It is right, that a forum would also be possible, but really, a forum -in my eyes – has been outdated by status updates (which could also be used instead of Blogs (we developed a social network – years ago already, which only needed „advanced“ status updates (they becam a calendar entry by adding a date for example… a bit like what http://www.trello.com does)
  
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  1. Rainer Gimbel
    
    25. November 2013
    
    Thanks for the feedback!
    
    Interesting aspect concerning the usage of forums! 🙂
Sebastian Schäfer

21. November 2013

There is also a great video on this topic, that I like to show in my presentations: Business Practices That Refuse To Die #44: Email Trees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqA_YKeboc

(in the infographic it should read „TOO old“ and „TOO complicated“) <- feel free to remove after the correction

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1. haraldschirmer
  
  24. November 2013
  
  Thanks @Sebastian Schäfer, very good video – the more (and different) approaches we have here, the better. I think it is not about who had the idea first, but how to win over and convince our people, that there are smarter ways of working. I would love to contribute to a „practical toolbox / convincing examples“
  
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