Dismantle Content Management Systems (CMS)! Rebuild them with Social Media Features

Categories: Podtech, Social Media, Technology, Video, Web ToolsPosted on December 3rd, 2006

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people want to use a wiki and a blog for their intranet. They want to bypass the corporate intranet silos and allow bottom-up and created content by the employees. It’s faster, cheaper, and less work for the Intranet management team…or is it? There can be a ton of challenges of letting anyone install and create a blog, wiki, forum, within an intranet. What about permissions, identity, scalability, duplicate content, versions, logins, security and any other challenge that emerges from a distributed content framework model.

As a former web manager, I know the challenges of content management systems, asking for the 2.0 features to emerge out of 1.0 CMS systems ain’t going to happen easily. I’ve experimented with Sharepoint Blog and Wiki features, but have yet to hear from anyone when that will fully roll out. Their webpage has SO much content, it’s difficult to navigate.

Interesting trend, many emerging software vendors are packaging up what works in today’s modern web, and is creating turn key suites for companies to deploy. The term “White Label” is being thrown around lately, as these platforms are plain, and ready for your to customize and brand yourself.

Video: Koral Content Management with Community
Scoble video interviews Tim from Koral, which is much like an Office Document management tool that overlays community tools, tagging, rating, versions, comments, RSS, and other collaborative tools. This could replace your antiquated CMS system.

Video: Blogtronix Social Software Suite
Blogtronix is an out of the box community suite that offers blogs, wikis, tags, rss that you could brand.

Community Server
Although I don’t see a video, most know to look at Community Server which powers Channel9, Xbox, and Dell one to one blogs. I’ve had a demo of this product, and thought it was worth exploring.

Watching Google
Recently, Google launched Gmail for small business and a college in San Jose, with the recent acquisition of Writely, Jotspot wiki (covered at Web SIG), blogger, and other collaboration tools, they may be able to provide social software suites that provides enterprise, collaboration, and social features.

What else?
Is there another turnkey suite out there that has features like the above companies? If so, leave a comment, I’ll add to the list.

Do you think we can get rid of the broken Enterprise Content Management systems (CMS) soon? I’ve managed four enterprise Intranets (or been on the primary teams) I’ve used four CMS systems in my career, and they have tremendous problems with scalability, flexibility and vendor lock in. It’s just a matter of time before enterprise CMS companies look to acquire companies like the above.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 at 9:34 am and is filed under Podtech, Social Media, Technology, Video, Web Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Approver.com isn’t out to replace the CMS but we’re a compliment to it and we’re starting to build integration with publishing systems. We’re all about the social media bit though — think “massively multiplayer workflow”.

Posted by Jeffrey McManus on December 3rd, 2006 at 10:58 am

Heh, here we go:

MMWCMS
Massive MultiUser Workflow Content Management System

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on December 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 pm

The biggest challenge I have faced when attemping to integrate blogs, wikis, COP’s etc into various intranets is the lack of particiaption in these applications. Jermiah, I hear the same requests, ‘I want a blog’ etc. However when the rubber meets the road I feel that the dynamics and cultures within many organizations are not condusive to support or encourage bottom up/grass roots development of intranets. Instead, I have found that it is much easier to identify super users, stakeholders and subject matter experts to participate in these community driven content applications.

I have been involved in testing a number of beta and less than beta products like wikis, COP’s and the larger vendors seem to be missing it a bit IMO. Recently when testing a Wiki it still seems too reliant on the CMS that is derives from. Just my opinion. Great topic!

Posted by Will Gaus on December 3rd, 2006 at 12:36 pm

Jeremiah,

The notes and concerns you mentioned are correct. We have solution for most of the remarks and questions you asked. I will be more than happy to show you in a personal demo what we did and keep improving at Blogtronix

PS. Thanks for mentioning Blogtronix

Posted by George Athannassov on December 3rd, 2006 at 12:42 pm

[...] Jeremiah Owyang looks at enterprise content management systems with social media features. While he is speaking mainly of corporate intranets and the like, the concept extends to any community. [...]

Posted by Dan Blank: Publishing, Innovation and the Web » Blog Archive » Content Management Systems & Social Media on December 3rd, 2006 at 1:03 pm

What about http://www.joomla.org/ or http://drupal.org/? Both open source CMS with a lot of the community features built right in.

Posted by Patrick Dodd on December 3rd, 2006 at 2:34 pm

Will

I hope Brian jumps in, he says the same thing about this topic of user adoption.

George, I met your CEO at Future of Web apps. Good team there at Blogtronix.com

Patrick, Yup, I’ve heard of those, but have little experience…anyone got any ideas?

I’m using basecamp right now, but that reminds me a bit more like a PM type of tool.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on December 3rd, 2006 at 3:14 pm

Jeremiah,
While I agree there will usually be the “we don’t know how to handle bottom up content creation and collaboration” complaints, one issue I think might be a non-issue in many cases is what to do with existing content. In my experience with corporate intranets there is usually a huge amount of content that NOBODY ever uses simply because it was created as a byproduct of long-defunct workgroups. Just starting afresh might not be such a bad idea.
- Dennis

Posted by Dennis D. McDonald on December 3rd, 2006 at 4:55 pm

I guess I have a question for all those who have posted on this topic. How open are larger companies to open source technology/platforms? My current employer (a rather large company) won’t even consider that route.

Posted by Will on December 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 pm

[...] Dismantle Content Management Systems (CMS)! Rebuild them with Social Media Features (tags: Social Media Network Community) [...]

Posted by Elroy Jetson » Blog Archive » links for 2006-12-04 on December 3rd, 2006 at 10:24 pm

Great post first off; I think the best cms systems out there will allow for creative module-ing of communication tools; Two quick examples:

1) Google Desktop and Personalized home. Widgets can easily be added or dropped.
2) With Salesforce.com (or other web-based enterprise applications) I can create a custom section tab and have it load whatever URL or other content I desire. I can enable this then for specific user profiles, for whom we designed the service.

Will & Dennis: thanks for the refreshing insight. I believe the business case for social/other comm. tools lies with:

1) if the business task/job process time is reduced compared to existing processes.
2) if the expected ROI (money, time) justifies it at this/later point in time.
3) getting an executive champion behind the efforts so as to stimulate employee buy-in.

I am also interested in Joomla, although I’m not very familiar with it.

Posted by Mario Vellandi on December 4th, 2006 at 12:22 am

Joomla and SMF work well as a collaborative site. I know Community Builder and some of the addins may have wiki possibilities. I’ve done a few Joomla+SMF+CB sites and though they are a pain for a novice like me, for a nerd they’re no problem I’m sure.

I’d be careful, security-wise, with open source sites like these. I was hacked twice.

Great post Jeremiah.