Social Media - Driving changes for IT?

This was originally posted on InfoBoom.  Reposting here for my regular readers.

I recently wrote a post titled Social – A Culture, not a tool that describes a “light bulb moment” that a friend of mine had when thinking about Social media’s use in marketing and PR.

In that post, I outline how a friend of mine came to the conclusion that social media is much more than just a tool to use to blast a message out to customers.

There’s a message in that story for everyone in business…but even more so for IT.

The message is this:

Social media is changing organizations. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sometime in the future, organizations are going to have to be much more open to the outside world.

Is this a good thing? Maybe…maybe not. But I think its coming (if its not already here).

What do these changes mean for IT?

It means more governance to manage data that shouldn’t be open to the public. It means more processes in place to ensure proper people have the proper access to the proper data. It also means a ton of headaches for IT security personnel.

Lots of headaches in social media, right?

Perhaps you can look at it that way…or…you can take a different tack and look at social media as the future of IT.

Social is driven by technology…why not be the driver of social within your organization? The Marketing organization is driving social. The PR team is driving social. Why not put the full force of the IT group and help drive social adotpion throughout your enterprise?

Social is driving change within organizations…IT can help driver that change and ensure social technologies are implemented correctly and proper governance and security are in place.

Or…you can sit back and do nothing and wait for the inevitable question of “what is the value of our IT group?”.

Adapt and drive change today. Or be forced to change tomorrow. It’s your call.