But anecdotes are one thing; some real research is another. So, I've been very gratified to see the results of research carried out by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) over the past year, which corroborated my view that social networking is going to be big for BI. Don Bulmer's blog entry gives all the details, but there was one snippet that, in my opinion, deserves special attention. The age profile of users of social networking tools has a double peak - one in the under-35 bracket (as would be expected) and another in the over-55s, which came as a bit of a surprise. It seems that the older decision makers must see the benefits of social networking, not through high prior familiarity with internet tools but based on the results they achieve. And it also poses a question - how do we get the middle of the age range (my own.... just about!) engaged?
I suspect that the answer will come down to BI vendors actively including more real social networking functionality and connectivity in their tools. And addressing the question of how to effectively use the function more effectively within the organization (where I guess the majority of the middle(-aged) managers are focused in the decisions - from both a data and people viewpoint). For BI tool vendors, it's still all to play for.
Posted November 19, 2009 4:56 AM
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