by Michelle Lentz

I follow Laura Fitton on Twitter and am usually either enlightened or entertained by her tweets. Her company, Pistachio Consulting, has released a paper and a comparison matrix on microblogging (or microsharing) tools used in corporations: Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison: Nineteen Applications to Revolutionize Employee Effectiveness. According the paper, there has been an uptick in this sort of corporate communication as the economy has a downturn and corporations cut back on travel costs.

Concurrently, employees see the collaboration, networking, problem-solving and other productivity benefits of web 2.0 tools and want to apply them at work. These tools directly contribute to knowledge capture and management as workforces are scaled back and baby boomers retire, and they boost motivation and retention, especially among millennial generation employees.

CIO magazine’s October survey of 243 IT executives found three-quarters plan to freeze or cut their IT budgets. There is a critical need for cheaper, more versatile ways for information to flow within the enterprise. Enterprise-grade versions of Twitter may be the low-cost solution that fills this need.

By researching 19 microsharing tools and their uses, the team came up with several key findings, including that your employees are probably already using some sort of microsharing tool and that these tools should also communicate with the “gold standard” of Twitter. The report goes on to define, and classify, these 19 different tools, listing advantages and disadvantages of each. Finally, they list the questions they asked users of these tools.

I’ll be referencing this paper in a presentation I’m giving on microblogging in education. As a big proponent of informal learning, I think microblogging helps inspire others to share and learn. “Watercooler learning” is evident in Twitter, and Laura touches, unintentionally perhaps, on these learning and training concepts.

Microsharing for organizational communication and collaboration fundamentally changes how employees interact with others and grow their professional capacity. Microsharing connects people in ways that promote mutual support, rapid networking, inspiration, mentoring and idea exchange.

This is incredibly useful for anyone looking to add a Twitter-like tool to their arsenal of internal corporate communications. As is pointed out in the paper, there aren’t any case studies yet, as usage is still too new.

You can download the paper and/or matrix free from Pistachio Consulting.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ‘08 in San Jose.

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