2. Compare the experiences for implementing internal social networks of the two organizations.

Why was one more successful than the other?

What role did management play in this process? Social networking has never been more popular, with social tools accounting for 20 percent of all online activity, according to ComScore. Many of today’s employees are already well versed in the basics of public social networking using tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Larry Ellison, head of the giant software firm Oracle, even went so far as to declare that social networking should be the backbone of business applications and that Facebook is a good model for how users should interact with software. But when it comes to actually using social tools for internal business purposes, the results have been mixed.

Information Week’s 2013 Social Networking in the Enterprise Survey found that only 18 percent of respondents believed their internal social networking programs were successful. The Information Week survey cited lackluster adoption as a major obstacle to success. As with many technology upgrades, companies that have tried to deploy internal social networks have found that employees are used to doing business in a certain way, and overcoming that organizational inertia can prove difficult. IT leaders hoping to switch to a more social, collaborative office culture usually find that most employees still prefer to use e-mail, for example. The employees may feel too time-pressed to learn a new software tool.