The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
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SharePoint: A Social Network for Learning by Michael Barshinger past September, Jobs pulled off a classic bait and switch. As he introduced the new iPod Nano, attendees cheered thinking it was the big surprise. As the cheering began to wane, Jobs delivered the real surprise — the latest version of iTunes enables its 160 million users to discover new music by following the purchases and recommendations of their friends and favorite artists. The new feature, cleverly named “Ping: A Social Network for Music,” was available later that day. Every move made by Apple in recent years has been strategic, including Apple’s decision to provide a social networking platform. Apple cares about promoting concerts, artists and the music our friends are listening to, but only because doing so will increase music sales. Just like every other business, Apple cares about increasing growth and profitability. A 84 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer pple is famous for going to great measures to keep their new products secret so that Steve Jobs can introduce them at special media events where Apple enthusiasts hang on every word in anticipation of the surprises he will unveil. This The Ping example is significant because Apple’s strategy for Ping can be applied to your organization’s strategy for SharePoint. Enterprise 2.0 Is Finally Here In the years since Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, popularized the term “Web 2.0” to describe applications that facilitate user-centric information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web, Wikipedia, YouTube, Craigslist, Flickr and Facebook have emerged as Web 2.0 technologies that have made the top ten list of most frequently visited Internet sites. In his 2006 article in MIT’s Sloan Management Review, “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration,” Andrew McAffee described the strategic integration of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise’s business processes, emphasizing that employee collaboration spurs efficiency, productivity and innovation by encouraging stakeholders to share information and discuss business problems in an open, collaborative setting.