Part 1 - Microblogs and KM
Introduction
Open is better than closed in many ways (Gartner, 2010) open means collaboration and effective participation. Microbloggings have become an indispensible tool for knowledge management in the corporate world because they provide light weight content of information and allow users to respond quickly. In this article the author will discuss the efficacy of Microblogging (MB) and the role played by MB in Knowledge Management (KM). Furthermore this article also discusses some benefits and problems related to using MB for KM. MB is defined as medium which provide one way communication between two or entities (people) in a virtual space by allowing them to exchange small elements of content e.g. short sentences (Andreas, 2011) also suggests that MB “allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links" (p54). Moreover Margaret Rouse gave a precise definition and said “MB is a web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service”. The examples of MB include Twitter, Yammer, and many other services. The benefits of MB Knowledge management is a very broad topic has between repeatedly revised by many people and its main idea revolves around collective intelligence. For knowledge to be properly managed it has to be share first thus MB are an important tool for knowledge sharing. In the corporate world, companies use different services for MB (such as Twitter, Yammer, blogger etc.) to share information within the organization. Knowledge sharing is a benefit of MB for KM because MB is ubiquitous and always provides employees with a just in time information. When knowledge is share frequently it maximizes employee's performance thereby increasing the organizations efficiency and effectiveness. The information that flows across the organization is often personal and reflective and the fact that it is Non-linear it actually enhances employee’s motivation to work hard. In the corporate world agility and collaboration are significant factors that drive competition. Since the ubiquity of web 2.0 allows workers, team members customers and clients to communicate freely and also respond very quickly the of this consequence lead to better decision making. |
MB plays a major role in connecting experts within and outside the organization. MB like Twitter allows you to only write 140 characters per conversation. This is good because it only allows you say what is important rather than long conversations that often take much time reading it. Moreover Twitter has a way of restricting the flow of communication since it uses special tags. These special tags (such as # and@) play an important role in privacy and data security. With the use of the tags workers or team members can only speak with a particular group of people within the organization and also respond to a set of people such that other people cannot see those responses. Although the focus here is not only on twitter there other MB such as yammer which is also playing its role in knowledge management.
Collaboration and agility make a significant contribution to innovation, now the author would like to look at innovation through collaborative learning. One scholar once said ignorance is the killer of innovation so what MB provides is information exchange which then leads to innovation. Let us take for example people who are working on an IT project MB can play a major role in creating new ideas as the information is being shared across the team, thus making a team to be productive at the same time. While still on project management it is important to also mention that MB also provides higher transparency and responsiveness since there is frequent communication. MB in a business environment provides a prominent source for informal learning (Gorman, 2010). Employees are able to get performance support through MB for example one team member may say “could you please help me with this task or else please check if I am correct” and get an immediate response. Hara once said “In the Information Age, companies must create, disseminate, and effectively use knowledge within their organization in order to maintain market share” (Hara, 2009, p. 1). Other benefits of using MB for KM includes effective marketing going back to our example of twitter, twitter make marketing easier, effective and cheap. Carmen (2009) has argued that about 80% of companies who are using MB for advertisement have increased their sales up to about 70%. This shows that the effective use MB for KM is proved to attract customers. |
Amongst other benefits these also cannot be ignored:
Limitation/Problems Information overload could be a problem since the content being sent is small so one as many messages as possible. One that can solve this is to use tools like “Tweet deck” which can help you organize your tweets and also the use of special tags as well. Gartner (2008) and Gorman (2010) suggest that lack of training is often a problem. All employees within the organization need to be trained to use MB and they must also know the secret tags within the company. MB can take company’s precious time since there is often no limit on what not to share and what to share, this can lead to unproductiveness. Thus there must some kind of limits set by the organization in order to control conversation and save time. Security - Also adding on data, the improper use of tagging might make it difficult find information let alone managing it. Some people are not skilled enough to summarize information, so instead they write incomprehensive and ambiguous message. This is more likely to lead to information confusion and misinterpretation amongst other employees. Privacy is the major issue generally on the web, although the companies gain competitive advantage through the use of MB it can however lose it if care not taken. If another company can find the company strategies, price mechanism and other confidential information through the careless use of MB within the organization. This can give other companies a competitive advantage over it. |
References - Part 1
Part 1
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- Koskela, B. D. L. (2009). Collaborative knowledge management— A construction case study
- Martin Böhringer, A. R. (2009). Adopting Enterprise 2.0: A Case Study on Microblogging
- http://article.wn.com/view/2012/08/30/Microblogging_becoming_popular_mainstream_media_in_Sacrament/
- http://www.iisocialcom.org/conference/passat2012/PASSATProceedings/data/4578b380.pdf
- http://www.scribd.com/doc/13273385/Analysis-indicators-for-communities-on-microblogging-platforms-
- http://www.scribd.com/doc/59318358/Microblogging-High-impact-Emerging-Technology-What-You-Need-to-Know-Definitions-Adoptions-Impact-Benefits-Maturity-Vendors
- Bradley, A. J. (2008). " Twitter and Knowledge Management: Synergy or Oxymoron?". Retrieved on 02 October 2011. < http://blogs.gartner.com/anthony_bradley/2008/09/29/twitter-and-knowledge-management-synergy-or-oxymoron/>
- Smarter - Modern & Social (2010) Experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNV0FG0NN9E
- Micro-Blogging is Good for Leadership, Good for Your Culture (2010) http://www.danpontefract.com/micro-blogging-is-good-for-leadership-good-for-your-culture/
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Part 2 - Mining Twitter for KM
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.” - Samuel Butler. I know that I have knowledge if I have first consumed and digested information and the lesson learnt then is what I need to manage because it is knowledge. In this article the author will be discussing the effectiveness of mining a
microblog and how this compares to traditional Knowledge Management mining. Knowledge mining is a process of discovering unrevealed knowledge which might be stored in various forms and places in a database. Locating the relevant data might not be a problem for some, the problem starts when the data is located because one need to go through all the files/data with a "yard-stick" until the relevant date is found. In most organizations knowledge is seen as an indispensable assert since it forms a bases of a foundation for an organization focus values and competitiveness. Today, knowledge mining helps companies to maintain relationships within the company and to control factors which exist only within the company such as price, product positioning, or staff skills, and other external factors such as economic indicators, competition, and customer demographics as well as enabling them to determine the impact on sales, customer satisfaction, and corporate profits (Palace 1996). As a researcher, I am always in the exposure of the academic databases (such as researching academic articles and journals) I have noticed one thing about these sources that is intensive searching. Relevant information sometimes is not easy to find you must look for it then understand after that analyze it and finally interpret it coming up with conclusion. This is the science of database technology. Traditional knowledge mining (TKM) has played its role in research and analysis since it provides knowledge that is reliable and traceable. However it is proven to be both time consuming, tedious and stressful sometimes. Unlike using web 2.0 collaborative tools like MB all data has to be checked, MBs use tags which make it easier to search for data. Although checking all data might be useful in some cases, there is still a problem of find junk that is the data that is not much useful to the organization. |
The knowledge may be reliable but most of it is not being but hidden and waiting for someone to discover it. Thus MBs has an advantage over TKM because it encourages collaboration and participation of users while mining knowledge.
MB provides search features that TKM do not have for example MB embraces diversity since they originate from people around the globe with different writing techniques. What I noticed during my search was the use of different languages and internet slang and this cloud be a limitation because people might not understand it. Moreover using MBs like Twitter for data mining also has some limitation among those limitations is the fact that Twitter only allows you to write 140 characters per tweet. I see this as a problem because it limit the amount of information being shared and small chunks of information which are posted in different times might make one to lose the train of thought on the subject. Twitter is the top MB that provides just-in-time information and allows people to collaborate and comment on a particular topic. It is well known by its famous feature of following people, basically one belong to a twitter because they follow on someone else. Yes twitter provides you with only 140 characters per tweet, this might be small for Facebook fans but for people in the corporate world who are used to multi-tasking 140 enough. My experience with twitter for the past two weeks has showed knowledge in an indispensable assert. Content is the main source of attraction, it could be one word or a sentence. |
What made data mining to be easier was the content that caught my attention and lead me to a link where the full and detailed story was.
The problems associate with using twitter for knowledge mining is that there is possibility of getting unreliable information. This is not for good, especially for academic research or even business research. Since the content has to be short, attractive and on p[point some people write good content with misleading links thereafter. I my own experience I notice that tags may be confusing for example we were using #ukzn2012 however there might be many other ways of writing this tag such as #Uniiversity-of-KwaZulu-Natal2012 or else Uniiversity_of_KwaZulu_Natal2012. Thus i see this as a potential threat to knowledge mining. For the past couple of weeks I have used tags like #usefulinfo referring to any useful information on the subject of privacy at University of KwaZulu-Natal, what I have noticed is that some people would post information that is not even close to being useful but still use the same tag. Furthermore these misleading posts can waist one's time when mining for knowledge. There were however some interesting facts posted around this tag. The significant part about the use of tag in spite other insignificant issues is that tags make searching easy and fun more especially if your tweets are arranged properly (Tweet deck is very useful arranging tweets). Mining knowledge using has an advantge of connecting you to other researcher in other countriues who have the same interest as you for example you can find a tweet from Gartner and follow up on him and you will also find other who are following him. Thus the knowledge circle never ends and the probability of quality information increases. Unlike TKM there is no way of connecting with other writers you only search for what you want no collaboration nothing. |
Conclusion
In conclusion I would say web 2.0 provides better tool for knowledge management and also encourages interaction between different parties involved in KM. This is good because it makes things much easier even for knowledge mining while the traditional way still has the advantage of providing reliable sources for professional research.
References - Part 2
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- Gartner (2010) http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=739613
- http://www.theecommercesolution.com/usefull_links/KBS_Data_Mining.php
- http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/issues.htm
- http://www.autonomy.com/content/Solutions/knowledge-management-elearning/index.en.html
- http://www.iisocialcom.org/conference/passat2012/PASSATProceedings/data/4578b380.pdf
- http://www.mendeley.com/research/twitter-power-tweets-electronic-word-mouth-1/
- Ayre, L. B. (2006). Data Mining for Information Professionals. Retrieved on 05 October 2011 from <
http://techessence.info/files/Ayre_DataMiningForInformationProfessionals_June2006.pdf>
More on Microbloggings
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