Page 333 -

Chapter 8 Social Media Information Systems
332
SM providers store and retrieve SM data on behalf of users. They must do so in the presence
of network and server failures, and they must do so rapidly. The problem is made somewhat easier,
however, because SM content and connection data have a relatively simple structure.

Procedures

For social networking users, procedures are informal, evolving, and socially oriented. You do what
your friends do. When the members of your community learn how to do something new and
interesting, you copy them. SM Software is designed to be easy to learn and use.
Such informality makes using SMIS easy, but it also means that unintended consequences
are common. The most troubling examples concern user privacy. Many people have learned not to
post pictures of themselves in front of their house numbers on the same publicly accessible site on
which they’re describing their new high-definition television. Many others, alas, have not.
For organizations, social networking procedures are more formalized and aligned with the
organization’s strategy. Organizations develop procedures for creating content, managing user
responses, removing obsolete or objectionable content, and extracting value from content. For
example, setting up an SMIS to gather data on product problems is a wasted expense unless pro-
cedures exist to extract knowledge from that social networking data. Organizations also need to
develop procedures to manage SM risk, as described in Q8-7.
Procedures for operating and maintaining the SM application are beyond the scope of this
text.

People

Users of social media do what they want to do depending on their goals and their personalities.
They behave in certain ways and observe the consequences. They may or may not change their
behavior. By the way, note that SM users aren’t necessarily rational, at least not in purely mon-
etary ways. See, for example, the study by Vernon Smith in which people walked away from free
money because they thought someone else was getting more! 6
Organizations cannot be so casual. Anyone who uses his or her position in a company to
speak for an organization needs to be trained on both SMIS user procedures and the organization’s
social networking policy. We will discuss such procedures and policies in Q8-7.
Social media is creating new job titles, new responsibilities, and the need for new types of
training. For example, what makes a good tweeter? What makes an effective wall writer? What
type of people should be hired for such jobs? What education should they have? How does one
evaluate candidates for such positions? How do you find these types of people? All of these ques-
tions are being asked and answered today.

Q8-2 How Do SMIS Advance Organizational Strategy?

In Chapter 3, Figure 3-1 (page 119), you learned the relationship of information systems
to organizational strategy. In brief, strategy determines value chains, which determine busi-
ness processes, which determine information systems. Insofar as value chains determine
structured business processes, such as those discussed in Chapter 7, this chain is straightfor-
ward. However, social media is by its very nature dynamic; its flow cannot be designed or dia-
grammed, and if it were, no sooner would the diagram be finished than the SM process would
have changed.
Therefore, we need to back up a step and consider how value chains determine dynamic
processes and thus set SMIS requirements. As you will see, social media fundamentally changes
the balance of power among users, their communities, and organizations.
Figure 8-5 summarizes how social media contributes to the five primary value chain activities
and to the human resources support activity. Consider each row of this table.