• Underground efforts yield big results. Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, and then sanctioning them within the enterprise.
• Frontline workers are driving the vision. Often, senior managers aren’t open to the possibilities for enterprise 2.0 innovation because they’re not actively using these tools outside of work. Indeed, many senior managers still consider such tools as something their kids do. One of the dirty secrets of enterprise 2.0 is that you don’t have to teach or convince younger workers to use these tools; they expect them and integrate them as easily into their work lives as they do in their personal lives.
• Communities are self-policing. When left to their own devices, communities police themselves, leaving very little need for tight organizational control. And such peer-to-peer policing is often more effective than a big brother approach. Companies that we studied said abuse was rare in their communities.
• Business need is the big driver. Although our report discusses specific tools (blogs, wikis, and such), enterprise 2.0′s power is not about tools, it’s about the communication shift that those tools enable.
• Organizations must cede power. Using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers has taught many companies that they can no longer control the message. This also rings true when using Web 2.0 tools for internal communication. Companies that once held to a command-and-control paradigm for corporate messaging are finding it hard to maintain that stance.

Nielsen talks a lot about integrating the social networking tools in to the rest of the intranet, where useful and possible. My team did a lot of work in this area a few years ago at the BBC.

In the first show we’ll be interviewing David Sacks, CEO of microblogging service Yammer, winner of the TechCrunch50 award last month.

Yammer is designed to provide a secure online space where company employees (with the same company domain in their email address) can broadcast short messages to each other.

For example, people can use it to ask questions or to let everyone else know what they’re working on.

Yammer follows in the footsteps of the hugely successful Twitter, which is being put to great public effect in the run-up to the US presidential election.

Philosophically, Yammer – “What are you working on?” within the company – and Twitter – “What are you doing?” publicly or privately – come from different places.

I’ve spoken with some companies who’ve been using Twitter to communicate in teams and groups privately for some time now. They say they can’t see the value in moving to Yammer. Others have said they find Yammer is just what they needed, and is really helping to make the feel part of the company.

Web-based services like these, along with many others, are described as the intranet beyond the firewall.

So I was just wondering…

1. With employees using more and more web-based services to get their work done and communicate, what now for internal communications and IT managers?
2. Why should we trust third-party services with our information?
3. What would happen if the service your company uses becomes a victim of the credit crunch?
4. What are the best and worst examples of people using microblogging services at work?
5. Do services like Yammer and Twitter finally spell the end of the company firewall as we know it?
6. Is all this the responsibility of the intranet manager? And if not, who’s responsibility is it?

They’re using it to take their 800 global employees through a big change programme. They’ve created a few custom apps that staff can use in their private network on Facebook. Apparently it’s boosted staff morale.

This is good news. Not because Facebook is the answer, but because it’s getting people thinking about the possibilities of intranets and moving the conversation on.

Much research has been done and the number one thing people want their intranet to help them with is finding other people.

What better way to help people find each other and the answers to their questions than by focusing the intranet – or rather the digital workspace – around people.

This very much fits in with my model which I call the DNA of the digital workspace – more on this soon – which places people at the centre of getting our work done.