I was challenged by Susanne Goldstein of The Social Age to write something about happiness at work and social software.
The question is: do all these fancy, new ways of interacting on the web like blogs, youtube, forums etc. make us happier at work and in life?
Instead of writing something, I made a short video-riff exploring the question with Thomas Madsen-Mygdal who is very much an expert on social software.
You can see the resulting video on Susanne’s excellent blog here: Does Social Software make us happy?
Personally I find that more people I talk to feel disconnected and there’s the potential that social software will not bring people together but that you will always feel that you’re missing out or missing something. I’ve noticed an increasing amount of time spent by people on these sites during working hours and thats why companies are starting to block them
So let me take a different approach (and sorry if it’s identical to the video…I haven’t been able to watch it). This doesn’t have to be an either/or type of thing. Sure, online social networks can have their darker sides of offering just a mirage of true relationships. As with anything, you do have to be conscious of what the relationship is. Heck, even some in-person relationships are just a mirage of a true relationship. We all have old-school networks where the connections are thin, at best.
Here’s what online social networks are to me…they are a powerful way to connect folks who would likely never have been connected in the past. Alex, there’s no way in the world I would have discovered you, your book, or your wonderful way of approaching the world without your blog. I would never have found great, meaningful friends from Hawaii, the UK, and even points closer to my home. We live in an age where distance is not the barrier it once was.
Today’s social networks are just tools. Nothing more. It’s our intention that determines whether they create meaningful relationships or not, whether they integrate with or dominate our daily responsibilities.
Social Software can definately make us happy at work.
There’s whole new movement “Enterprise 2.0” around it.What it basically aims at is using the social software tools like blogs , wiki’s ,rss at the workplace.These tools could be customized to be used at the workplace.Since most companies would be apprehensive about the security of the data and would basically want to keep it within firewalls.
So how does implementing these technologies increase happiness at work?
There is more collaboration and people instead of being in silos can find more like minded people to work with start new projects with.The knowledge is freely available and thus maybe lesser office politics .There is more transparency and consequently lesser for the grapevine.
Thanks for the post. If you don’t mind my asking, what WP theme are you using? Is it available Free or is it a custom design? Thanks.