In the HBR Blog Network there is an interesting discussion “Social Media Versus Knowledge Management”. This caught my attention immediately as I was scanning headlines for likely research sources for my ongoing work on the upcoming study “Adding Value to Corporate Libraries and Information Services.” (Release date estimated to be January 2012.)
The other reason it caught my attention is that when I’m selling my services for Strategic Social Media I talk a lot about the need to understand the effects of creating this type of data.
Thus the article’s definition of these two information activities really caught my attention:
- Knowledge management is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.
- Social media is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself
So as I read this I think that companies interested in making near real-time decisions must find ways to harness the power of social media content. It also means that the reliance on internal social networks such as Yammer will definitely find its place. No use filtering through external sources when what we need is our peers knowledge. We want to concentrate on the valuable data, not the mediocre.
Of course, as a librarian I can’t say that you should when exhausting all research angles, exclude Twitter and Facebook and such. I’m just saying that a good knowledge management system needs to find ways to incorporate the additional information streams that exist, including social media
Constance Ard October 26, 2011