Gartner just released a new report called "Predicts 2010: Social Software Is an Enterprise Reality"  summarizing the direction of enterprise social software over the next five years or so. One of the most interesting predictions they make is that through 2012, over 70 percent of IT- dominated social media initiatives will fail. This is an amazing and bold prediction but it is not a prediction that surprises me.

If you go back to the 90's (easy for those of us over 40)... think about how many failed enterprise deployments of CRM, ERP and intranets that you remember and were involved with. Are we really going down the same path with social software? I sure hope not. I think the future failures of business social software solutions will stem from these two tiny words... "IT dominated". 

Have we not learned anything from the success of web applications like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linked-In? I'll bet none of the 300+ million Facebook users out there called their IT team to set up their Facebook account or to teach them how to use it. The point is, we need to make business applications simpler, easier to use and faster to implement for the business user. As well, the business users HAVE to play a major role in the decision making and implementation process. After all, who do we think will be using these applications?

I encourage you to read Vanessa DiMauro's blog called "The Social Enterprise Fail Whale". She discusses the Predicts 2010: Social Software Is an Enterprise Reality report as well and does a great job in describing the need to have a business case for your social media strategy. In her article, she recommends that companies lead with business objectives and not with tools. I couldn't agree more. Don't give me a hammer without knowing what I am building first.

This is one of the primary reasons, we at IGLOO Software created the Social Media Playbook - to help companies create and implement their social media strategies - successfully. If we build it, they will come almost never works. As 2012 rolls around, we will see if Gartner's predictions were right and which companies succeeded in their social software strategies.