5 Ways Social Networking Has Improved in SharePoint 2010

One of the biggest paradigm shifts in today’s computing environment is the influence of social networking, and how it affects day-to-day business activities. So how will SharePoint 2010 (news, site) get with the times when it comes to social networking?

The same engine that helps you upload and share pictures of your last backyard BBQ is also helping Fortune 500 businesses make billions of dollars through creative marketing campaigns. In fact, the 2010 #1 ranked Fortune 500 company, Walmart, has a Facebook page with nearly 1 million fans and counting! The idea of not being part of a social network like Twitter or Facebook has become much more uncommon than it was in the early days of SharePoint 2007.

MySites in SharePoint 2007 are looking pretty bland these days when compared to modern social networking sites. In each of the sections below I’ll show you what’s new and improved, and it won’t take long to identify Microsoft’s commitment towards the social experience in SharePoint 2010.

1. New and Improved Profile Page

The SharePoint 2010 user profile page is the beneficiary of a lot of great design work by the SharePoint product team. It has also benefited from a lot of useful functionality similar to the features you are used to using on your Facebook and Twitter pages. A lot of these features are self-explanatory, but I’ll mention each one in its own right.

SharePoint 2010 MySites
 

• Overview — This page includes a quick snapshot of your social content. It includes the note board (which functions like a “wall” for various postings), a small colleague web part and another web part showing your commonalities with other users. It also displays basic profile data, your picture and presence information linking back to Office Communicator.
• Organization — This page includes a very slick org chart that is bigger than the smaller version on the overview page. It shows your peers to the right and your superiors above you in a top to bottom hierarchy.

SharePoint 2010 - MySites Org Chart
 

• Content — Includes content like recently touched documents and blog posts.
• Tags and Notes — Not much need for an explanation here. Start tagging and posting notes on other pages and your activity will be seen here.
• Colleagues — A running list of employees in your organization that you consider colleagues. When on another user’s profile page, you can add them as a colleague. You can also see suggested colleagues from your own colleague tab.
• Memberships — This displays the distribution lists and sites that you belong to. Items can be made private if need be.

2. Dynamic activity feed

The activity feed aggregates content you track and content you publish into a dynamic listing much like what you would find on your Facebook news feed. This listing is customizable and the SharePoint team has made this feature highly extensible. I’m betting that many 3rd party developers will include tracking abilities for custom actions included in their apps.

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Tags: enterprise 2.0, facebook, features, microsoft, mike ferrara, sharepoint, sharepoint 2010, social media, social networking, twitter

One of the biggest paradigm shifts in today’s computing environment is the influence of social networking, and how it affects day-to-day business activities. So how will SharePoint 2010 (news, site) get with the times when it comes to social networking?