For businesses who must purchase technology for their employees, then, this propensity that someone like me has should serve as an advantage. The employees should be able to launch a web-browser and get their day started with the newest and most up to date tools possible. Provided the necessary security and privacy requirements are in place, the company can then simply pay for it like it’s a magazine subscription, with little (if any) work in the background.

Check out this video, put together buy Box.net, Socialtext (disclosure: where I work) and a few other vendors, called I Choose the Cloud, that talks about the benefits of this better way, and how it departs from the ways of old.

Now, Twitter does deserve credit in combating its mainstream stream (ha) problem lately. It created better out-of-box, or in the browser, experience for new users with Lists and automatic ReTweets. These types of features might seem like a next logical step — or even pedestrian — to power users, but for new users who have no idea what a TweetDeck or a Seesmic is, it really helps. Still, even with Twitter’s openness in exposing its APIs and allowing people to build on the platform, the more closed Facebook has continued to thrive because it marries microblogging (or status messages, which are longer and have threaded comments) with other social sharing features in one constant stream without the need for redirection.

For this reason, I believe microblogging, integrated with other social software, will be more useful for the general populace as a technology at work than it ever will in their consumer life. Here is why enterprise microblogging will affect more people, and their day-to-day, than Twitter:

1) You Know the People

One of Twitter’s main problems is that if you reside outside of the insular community I mentioned above, it’s hard to see why you should be on Twitter. Suppose you’re an accountant, a doctor, or an auditor — rather than a social media consultant, digital or SEO marketer, or John Mayer. When you let Twitter cull your e-mail address book, you won’t come up with many names of people you know that are already on the service. So you need to start following people you don’t know. While seasoned Twitter users know value can be derived from following people you don’t know, most people won’t get there (60 percent leave after the first month), or their accounts go static and unused.

At work, you know the people on the enterprise microblogging platform because you work with them. If you have internal social networking profiles, when you examine one of their enterprise tweets, you can click on their name and see information with much greater depth than you ever could on a Twitter profile. When you know people, you’re more likely to understand the content and context of their short messages.

2) Communication Problem is More Real at Work

People already have consumer e-mail and Facebook (which has a status update) to communicate with their friends (not to mention phone, IM and texting). So it’s no wonder that many people can’t be bothered to spend much time on Twitter. Flawed as they are, those other technologies are good enough for them as consumers because they know exactly who they want to communicate with and how to reach them. In addition, services like Gmail sort through SPAM and enable accurate searches, so the “e-mail is broken” proposition doesn’t hold.

At work, the opposite is true. For most of you, your IT department has provided you with work e-mail that isn’t as nice as Gmail. Plus, you have to deal with occupational spam. When a colleague encounters a quandary that traditional systems and processes can’t readily address, he pings you and several other people. Odds are, only one or two of you possesses the right information to help him address his business problem, but he has already interrupted everyone else who doesn’t.

With enterprise microblogging, you can ask questions openly in the stream. The people who don’t have the answers can let it pass by without hitting a “reply-all,” and the person who does know can respond transparently for everyone to see (in case they ever encounter the same problem). This information remains searchable for everyone. This would not happen as efficiently in e-mail or IM.

3) Privacy Provides Comfort to Share

Twitter is sometimes too public for its own good (I’m discounting the fact they have the “private” option, since so few use it). Everything you publish flows into the stream for anyone (now, including Google) to see, and that’s scary to people. This could explain why Twitter is turning into a social bookmarking service. Tweeting a link and a one sentence explanation of how you feel about it seems safe enough. Tweeting where you’re headed for dinner or where you take your kids to soccer is too intimate and private for the whole world to know (again, we’re talking the everyman’s use case, who, believe it or not, aren’t enthralled with an overshare culture). As a result, they have more comfort with the Facebook status message.

Inside businesses, enterprise microblogging provides great privacy that eases people’s minds, lowering the threshold for sharing. A sales rep knows that he can enterprise tweet his location without worrying whether or not a competitor might put two and two together. A CEO can enterprise tweet a link that only his employees should read, but doesn’t want the whole world knowing their reading. Also, status messages, which can be a great way to get started with microblogging, aren’t frowned upon like the “heading to lunch” tweets are on Twitter. They aren’t trivial in the enterprise; location and activity status have value.

4) Value Becomes Evident Faster

It’s unfortunate that many people don’t realize how great Twitter is due to the time it takes them to realize value. For the first month I was on Twitter, I didn’t know who to follow or what to tweet. I figured it out eventually, and now enjoy amazing value from it. But for the general web populace, the gratification has to happen faster, or they leave. (I was also aided by the fact that I work within the proxy of the types of folks who typify Twitter’s user base, and I’ve come to know many of them personally.)

At companies, enterprise microblogging can provide immediate value because of the aforementioned points (knowing the people, and privacy). It’s less complicated to understand than most kinds of enterprise software, and people from all areas of your organization can get started with minimal training. Take this CIO story that highlights St. Louis Public Radio (SLPR), which recently implemented enterprise microblogging:

For example, SLPR’s receptionist received a call from a listener who heard an announcement on the radio about an event at a local high school and wanted to know more about it. Instead of sending an e-mail blast to all staff members, the receptionist used Socialtext’s app to poll the staff, and received an answer in less than five minutes. There was an immediate response, and we didn’t have to clutter e-mail inboxes to get it, Eby says.

[Abrupt end to post/cgl]

Scott Schnaars of Socialtext on the initial discussion with organizations about the need to purchase social software:

1. First, assess where Enterprise 2.0 is on the list of buying priorities. For example, deploying Windows 7 could be top of mind, so find out where you stand before you can have a conversation about the value of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.
2. Identify where pain points exist. Regardless of the amount of users you want to give access to enterprise social software, there are two areas where social software that can help drive business value: a) to fix broken informal processes and b) formal processes that exist inside organizations. An example of an informal process would be employees drowning in e-mail for processes that have no home in another system. An example of a formal process would be if people across departments are spending too much time trying to coordinate with each other on joint projects (update meetings, company materials, etc.)
3. When talking to a stakeholder or buyer, ask the question: “In a year, how can we measure whether or not this was a success?”
4. Example of key metrics: TransUnion saved $2.5 million from its use of social software. Why? They collaborated in a central area online to solve some technical problems that were occurring with their internal systems. By coming up with innovative ideas collectively, they avoided buying new hardware to solve the problem.

Chris McGrath of ThoughtFarmer

1. McGrath says, “we sell top down.” And at the top, a primary consideration is SharePoint.
2. If you’re a Microsoft shop, you need to have a SharePoint strategy and understand how Enterprise 2.0 technology and social software fits into it. How is this going to integrate with SharePoint? When would you use SharePoint? It needs to be part of your sales presentation as an Enterprise 2.0 vendor.
3. How can you leverage existing investments in legacy technology (again, SharePoint being a component).

Tom Kuegler of PB Works

1. ROI is critically important
2. Don’t shy away from saying why social software is a replacement for existing technologies.
3. Start with bottom-up approach. Prove success at a departmental level, and then you have value that you can show people at the top.
4. “You have to bring it back to numbers. If you can’t bring it back to numbers and do hard ROI, then stop what you’re doing because you’re wasting everyone’s time.”

Today, that changes with the launch of the The Lynch Blog. A general name to sum up a general goal: I will share my thoughts on everything that interests me, from business to technology to media to literature to life in San Francisco as a 20-something. This should put me into dangerous territory. If you subscribe to theories that the Web enables a culture of niches, that means a blog ought to be focused and specific.

But I believe, above everything, a blog should be liberating and free from constraints, something I couldn’t always say during my days in traditional media. A blog should also be innately social, connecting me and my thoughts with those of friends, colleagues, customers and everyone else I interact with in life — whether it’s virtually or in person. This space is for them as much as it is for me.

As some of you know, I recently began working at Socialtext, where I’m helping with our communications and marketing efforts. We provide companies with social technologies that make it easier for people to share information and expertise with each other. In bettering their connections internally, we believe it makes them stronger organizations that can serve all of us better (and faster) with their products and services.

I will improve this blog as soon as I have time (specifically, I plan to add more social features). But as someone who has an affinity for writing prose — some polished, some rushed and sloppy — I’d go crazy waiting another day.

So as the hackneyed expression goes, Hello, World.