March 24th, 2009 by Robin Green

As Twitter celebrates its three-year anniversary, its new deals with giant companies like Salesforce and BusinessWeek seem to hint at a sparkling future. And thanks to a new sponsorship agreement that Federated Media brokered with Microsoft, the service will begin generating funding that doesn’t come from a handful of venture capitalists.

One advantage Twitter has over social networking sites like Facebook is that users don’t have to visit the site to use its service. Its extensibility makes it more convenient and easy to integrate into corporate learning systems, customer service departments and marketing schemes.

Best Buy is another large company that has incorporated Twitter, adding feeds to its new social-media hub and learning system, ConsumersPrice.com. Users can comment on various products through Twitter, share product photos using Flickr, and receive price alerts via SMS.

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March 24th, 2009 by Robin Green

The incorporation of Twitter into corporate learning systems hasn’t happened exclusively in media companies like BusinessWeek. Salesforce has recently constructed a CRM application for Twitter.

The purpose of the Twitter-response tool is to help companies locate and assist customers who for whatever reason (like bad experiences in the past with customer service) are likelier to use the Twitter community as a learning system for product support than to call customer service. Using the Twitter-response tool, service reps from companies including Comcast, European telecom co. Orange, and Dell are able to monitor the Twitter stream for messages that mention their brand.

Salesforce’s social networking approach to customer learning systems was introduced in January, when Salesforce unveiled its Service Cloud. The Service Cloud is the new name for its customer-service app line that includes not only call centers, email, and instant messaging, but also an application to allow companies to use Facebook to find and help customers with product problems.

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March 24th, 2009 by Robin Green

Even with its recent “facelift,” Facebook will need to keep a watchful eye on microblogging sites like Twitter in the race for attention in the business world, and inclusion in corporate learning systems. Companies like Salesforce, Best Buy and BusinessWeek have now incorporated Twitter postings into their revamped websites and products.

Facebook has made sweeping attempts at redefining its functionality–mirroring Twitter, in fact–with status updates now serving as the main page. However, companies that have jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon are trying out the latest fad–activity feeds via Twitter and other microblogging sites–in their LMSs, learning systems and marketing schemes.

BusinessWeek is using a Twitter feed in its social hub, Business Exchange. Members can create profiles and comment on stories. Comments are displayed as part of a stream and story URLs are automatically shortened. While media sites like CNN.com have incorporated Twitter updates indirectly through Facebook Connect, BusinessWeek‘s direct inclusion of Twitter side-steps Facebook–a new phenomenon in the corporate world.

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March 23rd, 2009 by Robin Green

But Socialtext Signals isn’t alone in its Twitter-like functionality for company learning systems, geographically dispersed teamwork, and marketing purposes.

“There’s a lot of standalone Twitter clones out there,” says Ross Mayfield, president of Socialtext Signals. “The difference with what we’ve done is bring an integrated experience across social collaboration tools. The other ones are their own silo.”

Yammar is just one of many other services that market microblogging for company learning systems. Signals works with Socialtext’s flagship wiki product, which allows employees to collaborate on the editing and reading of documents, and interact in company learning systems. There’s Socialtext People, which builds Facebook-like profiles for the enterprise. Other social software vendors, such as Six Apart and Automatic, have also added microblogging to their existing products.

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March 23rd, 2009 by Robin Green

There are a number of microblog vendors who have tried to bring the Twitter-like experience into company learning systems. The public affairs firm Davies uses Enterprise 2.0 vendor Socialtext, a company that takes web 2.0 technologies and tailors them for business learning systems.

Enterprise 2.0 recently released Socialtext Signals, a product that allows employees to share short messages and keep each other updated on business activities such as editing a document, heading out for a business trip, or meeting with clients.

Socialtext Signals can also aid employees across geographical spaces who are collaborating using an LMS or other company learning systems.

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March 23rd, 2009 by Robin Green

More and more companies use Twitter–the short messaging service that allows real-time discussions–for  marketing and customer service purposes. But examples of bringing microblogging technology into organization learning systems and LMSs for collaborative purposes are harder to find.

Nevertheless, microblogging is very slowly making its way into corporate learning systems around the globe. Take Lisa Bertero Palmer, senior vice president of Davies, a public affairs firm. She is in the process of starting up an internal, Twitter-like experience for approximately 50 employees in geographically dispersed locations throughout the country.

The goal is simple. “We’ve been using it as a way to vastly increase efficiency while cutting down on email,” Palmer says. “People will share pieces of knowledge or key actions they’ve taken throughout the day.”

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March 20th, 2009 by Robin Green

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the prevalence of obesity in adult Americans is 32.2%, while the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry reports between 16-33% of children and adolescents are obese. But the obesity epidemic not only affects adults who lead sedentary office lives or kids in LMS or classroom learning systems. Organizations may suffer from the effects of the health problem.

A healthy staff means a more productive, collaborative and creative staff. Additionally, encouraging healthy lifestyles and exercise in training programs and other company learning systems can save organizations thousands of dollars annually.

A study in the journal Health Affairs noted that: “Per person healthcare spending for obese adults is 56 percent higher than for normal-weight adults. Over 15 years, the additional costs incurred by obese adults with private health insurance versus normal-weight adults increased from $272 to $1,244 per person per year.”

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March 19th, 2009 by Robin Green

A simple way to encourage exercise in your organization’s learning system or training program is to use energizers to get participants going. These may include breaks, question and answer sessions, LMS-hosted activities, or exercises. After a morning and/or afternoon dedicated to a residential learning system, encourage participants to use the gym or other facilities, or get outside for a walk.

A more complicated and costly way, albeit an increasingly interesting one (especially considering the growing obesity problem in the U.S.) to energize participants in company learning systems is the installation of treadmill desks. Dr. James Levine’s famous Steelcase Walkstation, among other pricey systems, is probably not a realistic option for most organizations. But poke around the web and you’ll find sites devoted to help you build your own, with the help of some heavy duty plastic shelving, thick Styrofoam planks and cable ties, for about $50.

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