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Hugh answers some questions for a colleague that works for SAP:

What tools are they embracing? Do various cultures impact the tools that
are gaining in popularity?

They are embracing all sorts of tools. There a lot of them out there, and nobody, repeat nobody can predict how much traction they’ll eventually get inside a company culture. So what the savvy social software engineer will do is try lots of things and see which snowball rolls all the way down the hill, rather than put all of the eggs into a single, oversized basket.

All this time after Cluetrain, and we still do not know where it is all going. From Digg and del.icio.us to Linked-In and CompanyLoop, there is a very long continuum of methods and purposes for social networking.

Hugh links to John Husband who talks about “People as the new API“:

People are like API’s, I think. If they are relatively closed and / or fixed on a given ideology, method, school of thought or set of concepts, they will reject, forestall or otherwise marginalise other ideas, facts and ways of viewing and working with issues. Closed people and closed minds create walled gardens in which they walk and play with others who belong to the same or very similar gardens. If they are more open, they tolerate more dissent, challenge and questioning, and can put that to use to explore and imagine more deeply and widely. They can help to imagine and seed other gardens where other types of ideas and knowledge can grow and be put to use.

More conversation and openness between the company and the customer can only lead to improvements for both parties in the eventual transaction. Some companies will get this and thrive, others will attempt to preserve their control of the information flow, and make a lot of extra work for themselves.

Debbie Weil has more thoughts on this here:

The top-down, command-and-control approach to communicating a company’s news and daily doings is giving way to something messier and more human. Namely, blogged bits and pieces, either from employees or from the CEO or other top execs, that tell a company’s story much more effectively than any press release or official pronouncement ever could.

Update: Henry Jenkins has more on the stratification of social networking.

Share your thoughts in the Comments: How do you use social networks?