CIOs OK with Social Media

Who is accessing social media at the workplace?  This was an interesting topic of discussion at this month's Charities@Work Conference, where I spoke about the potential impact that social media technology could have on workplace giving programs.  The answer, it seems, is everyone. 

In a recent informal survey of CIOs, Tech Republic found that the majority favor allowing access to social media sites from work (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=4076&tag=nl.e101).  Opinions varied, as did the degree of access and openness.  But the trend is clear.  Asking CIOs, if they should allow employees to access social media sites two years ago would result in a resounding "no" from the vast majority of companies.  As one CIO puts it in the Tech article, "We must monitor and adapt security models to a Web 2.0 world."

Back to the ongoing discussion we've been having about workplace giving - how does this apply to us?  First of all, I'm not advocating that every corporate philanthropy program create a Facebook page or Twitter account.  Instead, I'm encouraging everyone responsible for corporate giving programs to use these communication and collaboration tools to enhance their programs within their existing technology.  Can you leverage your corporate Intranet, where many of these tools may already exist?  Do you have a technology vendor supporting online giving programs?  Then ask that company "where are my social media tools?"

It is a Web 2.0 world, and somewhere out there Web 3.0 and probably 4.0 are incubating.  The value of all this "Web 2.0 stuff" is that it begins to fulfill the promise of technology by providing tools that work the way people want to communicate and interact with each other.  Think about it.  Why do our teenagers spend no time on email?  Because email really replaced letter writing and long phone calls, not rapid and immediate conversation.  We have IM, texting, and Twitter to thank for taking the concept of email and making it work one way - not the only way, but one way - that we want to talk to each other.