Weekend Reads: Intranets Grow Up + No Love for Information Management

Soon we'll all be pushing our way through the crowded stores in hopes of finding holiday gifts that our family and friends will enjoy ... Did that thought send shivers down anyone else's spine? In this last weekend before the holiday season kicks into full gear, take some time for yourself and check out our weekend reads. This week we look at the intranet's identity crisis, find out why information management gets no love in the boardroom and learn why digital marketers should be looking into semantic search. 

Top Social Business Article

Today's intranet is one that lacks an identity. Every employee and every organization has a different way of describing, deploying and utilizing its features so it's no wonder why the modern intranet is suffering from an identity crisis. Is there any hope of solving this problem? Gordon Ross says yes in his article: Solving the Modern Intranet's Identity Crisis.

I’m surprised I haven’t come across an intranet named Panacea yet -- given the modern intranet’s perceived cure-all, life-prolonging capabilities, it would certainly seem like an obvious choice. So what’s the source of the confusion? Let’s take a walk through a number of different perspectives on just what the modern intranet means."

The Contenders

This week in our contenders category, we have:

• SharePoint 2013, This Old House Style - Moving In and Living Together by Chris McNulty
• The Missing Link in SharePoint Site Usability by Wendy Neal
• Intranet Search: More Than Just a Search Box by Martin White
• Reinvent the Intranet with SharePoint Search and Social by Benjamin Niaulin
• Today's Intranet is a Mix of Old and New by Andrew Dixon
• Another Look at Leadership: Nature, Nurture or Destiny? by Stephen Fishman
• Transforming Traditional Intranets: Three Places to Focus by Gia Lyons
• A Love Letter to My Intranet by Carrie Basham Young
• Social Intranets, the Lemming Curve and 'Down With People' by Tim Walters

Top Information Management Article

Information managers stop writing that business case because Joe Shepley is telling it like it is -- Nobody Really Cares about Information Management. 

Information management is technology intensive -- so much so that we can lose sight of the fact that we’re trying to solve business problems by managing information, not simply trying to use technology to manage information."

The Contenders

• Instead of Fighting Content Management, Simplify It by Laurence Hart
• 9 Days of Information Governance Analysis by Mimi Dionne
• Tableau 8.1 Democratizes Data: It's Easy, Fast, Beautiful, Now Integrated with R by Virginia Backaitis
• Big Data Bits: Back to School with Cloudera and Udacity, Splunk Goes to Washington by Virginia Backaitis

Top Customer Experience Article

Google had the right idea when it introduced the Knowledge Graph in 2012. I know, you're thinking "oh yeah, graphs, so exciting." But brands that take advantage of these semantic relationships can better understand their customers and improve their marketing techniques as Murthy Nukata explains in his article: Why Every Digital Marketer Needs a Graph.

Brands can create their own graphs to better understand customer needs and improve marketing messages, or they can make sure their solution providers employ graphs that can be easily leveraged. Taking it one step further, any marketer who doesn't have a graph within the next twelve months will be at a permanent competitive disadvantage."

The Contenders

Be sure to take a look at:

• The Human Channel Puts a Face on Customer Service by Scott K. Wilder
• 5 Ways Facebook Apps Can Complement Your Website by Jim Belosic
• Web Experience: When a Tiny Task Is Important to the Organization by Gerry McGovern
• Is Salesforce Losing Its Sizzle or Missing the Mark (For Now?) #DF13 by Virginia Backaitis

Title image courtesy of Nadezhda1906 (Shutterstock)