Knowledge Sharing Tools and Practices

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1 Knowledge Sharing Tools and Practices

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3 Manual/model for Transnational Design of Projects Knowledge Sharing Tools and Practices in Transnational Communities Executive Summary Social Media is booming on the Internet. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, Weblogs and Wikis have taken the world in a storm. Increasingly, companies have realized the potential of these tools for knowledge sharing. Based on theories like Communities of Practice and Knowledge Maturing, research is developing guidelines for how these tools can be used in this context 1. While in organizational settings, there is vibrant research, much less is known about how the tools could be employed effectively in transnational settings. Abstract This report draws some conclusions from an interview study on how to employ tools for knowledge sharing in transnational projects, and which practices have proven successful. We have conducted an interview study among 10 experts working in or managing transnational networks and communities. From an analysis of these, we discuss successful and unsuccessful practices that have been identified and the tools that are used in this context. We close with recommendations on how to employ a number of tools we have identified, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. 1 A multimillion Euro project is currently being launched by a European consortium led by Tallinn University to research the use of social media in learning at the workplace in cross-organizational regional clusters ( 1

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5 Table of Contents Abstract...1 Executive Summary...1 Introduction...4 Research design...5 Results and discussion...8 Used tools...8 Knowledge sharing practices...10 Technological aspects...11 Stages of community development...12 Conclusion and recommendations...13 References

6 Introduction The regional innovation system is characterized by co-operation in innovation activity between firms and knowledge creating and diffusing organizations, such as universities, R&D institutes, training organizations, technology transfer agencies, and so forth; and by the innovation supportive culture that enables both firms and systems to evolve over time. Knowledge creation and capture approaches focus on how new knowledge is developed and how it is codified in order to share it with others. Knowledge does not exist statically, but emerges only within a context through interaction and evolution. Change also serves as a seed for the production of new knowledge (Lee & Su, 2010). Knowledge organization systems provide tools for storing, categorizing, and accessing information. Knowledge transfer, sharing, and application practices highlight the ways that knowledge can be disseminated and applied in the field (Kasper, 2007). Lin and Lee (2006) have identified a positive relationship between use of technology and knowledge sharing. In the current research the focus of used technologies is addition to the traditional technologies on social media and Web 2.0 technologies. The potential of social media tools is identified for knowledge sharing practices in order to promote cooperation and achieve the competitive advantage. Web 2.0 applications and technologies have found their way into business environment, but using social media is not as popular as traditional technologies like . Although several authors have claimed that technology supports knowledge sharing in the organization, there are lot of barriers that influence the sharing practices. For instance Sun and Scott (2005) concluded that there were at least 14 sources from which barriers to knowledge sharing arose. The major categories of barriers included: organizational relationships, organizational climate, organizational structuring and organizational imperative. Therefor the problem can be formulated that although there is active research in organizational settings about the usage of social media tools for knowledge sharing, but much less is known about how the tools could be effectively used in cross-organizational settings or in international cooperation. Also the potential barriers in such international cooperation should be studied for identifying the gaps and possible solutions. The aim of the study was to investigate what kind of knowledge sharing practices can be identified and which tools are used for supporting the knowledge sharing in international networks. Additionally the aim was to map the possible gaps in the knowledge sharing practices and propose recommendations for overcoming the barriers. Research aims to develop guidelines for innovation networks how to use social media tools in order to ensure knowledge sharing between members and implementation of transnational collaboration. Following research questions were formulated: In what way the members describe the use of technologies for knowledge sharing in their networks? What kind of barriers the members perceive in their knowledge sharing processes within the network? 4

7 Theoretically the research based on the theories like Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) and Knowledge Maturing. Knowledge-maturing is a form of goal-directed collective learning, where knowledge is created by systematically moving through a number of maturity phases (Schmidt, et al. 2009; Kaschig, Maier, Sandow, Lazoi, Schmidt, Barnes et al., 2012). The Knowledge Maturing perspective is a novel approach that helps understanding the fundamental change, the barriers and disruptions in knowledge development, but also shows opportunities and gives guidance to make use of them (Schmidt & Kunzmann, 2012). Research design The research was designed as a descriptive multiple case-studies research. This enables to explore differences within and between cases. The goal is to replicate findings across cases. Because comparisons will be drawn, it is imperative that the cases are chosen carefully so that the researcher can predict similar results across cases, or predict contrasting results based on a theory (Yin, 2003). The data credibility was enhanced with multiple data sources (Patton, 1990; Yin, 2003), such as interviews, direct observations of usage of tools during the interviews, web inquiry, and some participantobservation within the open Facebook and Linkedin groups. Open-ended interview questions, as they permit subjects to freely articulate their beliefs and insights, were found to be the most appropriate device to understand how community members shared or did not share knowledge. Qualitative methods allowed for more flexibility and serendipity in identifying factors and practical strategies than the formal, structured quantitative approach and allowed to do conclusions (Hopkins, 2001; Keyes 2008). During the period from December 2012 until the end of May 2013 altogether 10 interviews were conducted and as several interviewees represented more than one business network, cluster or association, then the collected experiences give broader understanding of the usage practice of social media tools (see Table1). Three sets of interviews were conducted. The first aim was to interview pilot clusters in StarDust project (N8, N10) (see coding below). There were several excuses not to give an interview for this study, including presumably the apprehension that the knowledge sharing practices are not fully develop and there is no practical experiences to share. Therefore, as the set of different cases was too small, two more sets were collected. First of them was the series of three international networks (N1-N3) who had the goal to cooperate and share best practices between the members and second set was the series of clusters established in Estonia(N4-N6) and also in other countries (N9, N11). Purposeful sampling is the dominant strategy in qualitative research. Purposeful sampling consisted of information-rich cases, which could be studied in depth (Patton, 1990). Therefore, there is no minimum number of interviews required for qualitative research. 5

8 Table 1: Overview of conducted interviews Interviewee Represented networks Role (s) How the interview was conducted I1 N1 National Contact point, member F2f I2 N3 Member of executive working group F2f I3 N2 National representative and coordinator F2f I4 N7, N8, N9 Roles in different networks: N7 partner in pilot cluster, N8 National contact point, partner, N9 member Skype I5 N4 Project manager F2f I6 N7 Communication officer responsible for the communication and the website Skype I7 N6 Project manager F2f I8 N5 Communication manager F2f I9 N7, N10, N11 Roles in different networks: N7 associated partner in pilot cluster, N10 associated partner, N11 project manager cluster development Skype I10 N7 Member of high level group, partner Phone This research is implemented in context of innovation networks and clusters (also as communities) development. As for the better understanding of knowledge sharing practices some characteristics and properties of network was collected from the interviews and from other freely available resources in Internet (see Table 2). Table 2: Characteristics of networks code Source Age Size Type * (N1) (N2) (N3) Interview, observation, website Interview, website Interview, observation, website Goals counties N Promotion Cooperation KS, Policy proposals member organisatio ns organisatio ns from 23 N N (A) Cooperation, promotion, supporting Cooperation, promotion, best practices, Technology/ method used f2f, , website, phone, login area, content repository, Alfresco f2f, ., phone, website, Skype, WebEx, login area from the website f2f,, , phone, login area from the website, Basecamp, diversity/ region/ Cross sectoral, Intern. Intern., manufacturi ng Intern, agencies Subgrou ps Yes - Yes 6

9 (N4) (N5) (N6) (N7) (N8) (N9) (N10) (N11) Interview, website, Facebook Interview, observation, website, Facebook Interview, Website Interviews (3), website, Linkedin Interview, website Interview, website Interview, website Interview, website, presentation countries C Cooperation, education, export promotion C Cooperation, knowledge sharing members WPs, 5 pilots, 34 partners, 33 associated partners C Cooperation, promotion, knowledge sharing N Cooperation, k, knowledge sharing PC Cooperation, Knowledge sharing, learning, devepment of cooperational model, N (A) partners, 9 associated partners PC Development, cooperation C Promotion, cooperation * N network, A association, C cluster, PC pilot cluster Webex, Skype f2f, , website, newsletter, mailing lists, Facebook, Doodle, Google Docs, FTP, intranet f2f, , news by , Facebook, mailing lists, Community Management Tool f2f, phone, , website, intranet, trainings, infodays f2f, , phone, website, Linkedin, Twitter, Projectplace f2f, Phone, , website Projectplace f2f, , website, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Trello, MeetUp, GoToMeeting, Dropbox, GoogeDocs, Skype f2f, , Facebook, website, Projectplace f2f, website, , newsletters, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, GoogleDocs, Skype, sectoral sectoral sectoral Enterprises. Agencies, ministries sectoral sectoral sectoral sectoral Yes Yes Yes yes na na na na 7

10 Results and discussion Following section provides the results of the interviews focusing on used technologies and tools and factors that influence the knowledge sharing within the communities. Used tools Results of the interviews indicate that communities use mainly following tools for knowledge sharing: (11 communities), including mailing listis for different interests groups (mentioned by two communities); Website (9 communities), whereas 6 of them indicated that they have added special intranet functionality to their website where invited members do have access to more private information, materials and other resources; Phone (5 communities), one of them emphasized that in their network the phone is the main tool for knowledge sharing as the members are too busy to read s or follow the newsletters; Spaces for project management (Alfresco, Projectplace, BaseCamp, Trello) (mentioned by the 6 communities) for sharing the materials, evaluating the projects; Web-based conference tools and communication (WebEx, Skype, GoToMeeting) mentioned by 6 communities); Newsletters (3 communities) sent by s to the members and other possible interest groups. Social media tools were mentioned less: Facebook is used by 5 communities and mainly focused on the members of the external communities; Twitter is used by 4 communities and focused on the members of the external communities; LinkedIn is used by 3 communities and is considered as more formal networking site compared with the Facebook. Collaborative creation of documents e.g. GoogleDocs, Mindjet (3 communties); Wiki, Weblog, Doodle and meetup were tools that were mentioned once by the communities. Face-to-face regular formal meetings and informal gathering were mentioned by all of the communities as knowledge sharing methods and it was possible to perceive that all the communities value the importance of meetings with the people in real life. An understanding of the concept of Communities of Practice helps us to understand the role that tools and technologies play in community learning. Wenger, White and Smith (2009) have presented a map of community tools, which can be used to analyze the existing tools the community uses, identify any obvious gaps, or identify requirements for new tools that would supplement existing tools. The map classifies tools in terms of three dimensions: (1) Whether they support more participation or reification, (2) whether they are synchronous or asynchronous, and (3) wheter they are focused more towards individual identity or group identity. Proposed map can be used to analyze the existing tools the community uses, identify any obvious gaps, or identify requirements for new tools that would supplement existing tools. 8

11 In this research we use this framework (Wenger et al, 2009) to analyze the use of tools and technologies in communities and their impact on knowledge sharing (see Table 3). Table 3: Community tools with the examples Dimensions Tool/technology Example Participation Reification Synchronous Asynchrono us Individual identity Group identity Facebook, Online conference tools, Phone GoogleDocs, Mindjet, Basecamp, Intranet Online conference tools, phone, Twitter , wiki, weblog Individual profile pages, LinkedIn, wiki, newsletter, Twitter It seems that the activity in Facebook grouped around the events, before and after the event they are active. And it seems like they post pictures from the events like workshops and the results. Facebook is very easy in that sense. All the useful information for the members is stored and shared in Intranet, e.g. memos, survey reports, useful information for the members How to?, Good experiences with GoToMeeting. People from different parts of the World could participate. Members prefer communicate by phone, because it is quickest way to get the information, get the answer to the question and solve problems They [members] just wanted to use it [Facebook] for personal communication For business to business is better LinkedIn We think that it [Twitter] is not for the internal communication that is very targeted towards policymakers level to reach out there. It can be concluded that the following characteristics can be identified in the communities knowledge sharing operations: Mainly the focus is on sharing the information within the community than sharing the knowledge; Development of the individual identity is less focused. Individuals are not supported to share their individual knowledge with the peers, individuals weblogs, profile pages, twitter accounts etc are not seen as part of the group identity; Group identity is perceived to be more as a community profile in LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, but less has been perceived that individuals profiles and professional knowledge is also part of the group identity; Dimension of the reification is more transparent in the community than participation. Reification occurs through creating the project documents and sharing them with the members, whereas participation mainly seem to occur through online discussions and meetings via conference tools; Social media less used but still perceived to be powerful tool, but time consuming as continuous update of information persumes time. 9

12 Phone and s (including mailing lists and newsletters) are most dominant tools in the communities. Knowledge sharing practices Knowledge sharing in the community or organization is related often with the individual (awareness, trust, personality, job satisfaction), organizational (structure, culture, reward and recognition, work processes and office layout) and technological (ICT tools, ICT infrastructure and ICT know-how) aspects (Noor & Salim, 2011; Bakhari & Zawiyah, 2008; Wahlroos, 2010). Current research revealed the similar aspects related with the technology-supported knowledge sharing in the communities: Sense of community and trust building (individual level) - Trust within the community and community building was considered one of the most important aspects. Especially in the virtual communities it was considered important that the members should meet in real life with each other, especially in the first phase of the community-building process. Participants of the study indicated: - You can use tools, but before you need to build a trust and people need to know each other; - Especially in the beginning it is important to meet, to really get to know each other; - Emotional connectedness is important, it is important to work with a building of the community sense - The sense of community is built by weekly meetings; - Tool maybe was good, but community sense was missing; - Without no common values and community management any technical tool can help to fulfil the social field. Community management and leadership (organizational level) - The role and the capability of the community manager and/or facilitator is very important. It was the impression from more than one interview that tools are more effectively used and the information is shared when the facilitator is good communication manager and information flow is acceptable for members. - The role of the moderator or communication manager is extremely high. There is so much information always to share or collect and if this is not processed then it might be useless because of the information surplus; - It is all about the manning the necessary roles to moderate the discussions if you want discussions; - There is so simple to share. Starting discussion and moderating discussion are really much more demanding. And you actually need some kind of editor or somebody who moderates. Design of the work processes and knowledge sharing practices with suitable tools (organizational level) - It is not enough to take new tool into the usage within the community without introducing to the members the specific goal, practices and workflow of the new technologies. Members should be aware what kind of activities are supported with the technology and why. Training of using technologies was also considered important aspect, even if members have previous experience with the tool, but if the focus changes (individual usage of Facebook vs using Facebook within community), it should be explained and taught to the members. Several communities pointed that using tool without clear goal and specifically designed activities and is additional task for the members and if needed, the training should be conducted: - People don t use the tools that they don t really need to; - If people have to learn new logic how to use the tool which is not organic and comfortable then they will not use it; 10

13 - The principle is that you have to keep the tool as simple as possible. Then it works and doesn t have any difficulties to use it. For communication and knowledge sharing only those tools are used, which are widely in use for everyday communication; - Everyone say that people are a bit tired of using new tools all the time; - I think it is very important to really negotiate few tools and strike on having everybody using them. Because it is a big investment for people; - And to my experience from most of the projects where I am in it is very easy to start to use Facebook and LinkedIn, but it does not create value, because you need to have people who have specific role and you need to have shared protocol and you need to share how to use the tool. - That is very typical that tools actually need to have roles manned, that nobody knows who has that role. I have seen that very many times; - There is a need for motivational speech in the beginning and at least a little training; - Usually the areas of training, deciding of which functionality tool to use and to man the role more or less all they are neglected as an important part of really getting value from the tool; - The training is not only using the functionality but how, which functionality is going to use in the project and who mannes the role, the most important roles connected to the tools. Technological aspects Riege (2005) have listed several barriers that influence using technologies for knowledge sharing purposes in knowledge intensive organizations. Some of these barriers were also identified in the current study: Low usability tools are meant to be used, but the due to the several reasons, the members don t use it unless they are not forced to it: - Projectplace is a good tool, but people are not using it; - If there is a separate environment where you have to log in and you don t do it too often then it takes too much time and if you can, you will skip it. Mismatch between individuals requirements and integrated IT systems and processes individuals needs and goals of using IT system can be significantly different that the organizational goals are: - When we discussed it in the beginning there were so many people who told that that they didn t want to use Facebook. They just wanted to use it for personal communication. So they didn t really want to have an important group in Facebook. Low integration of IT systems tools could be more used by the members of the communities if these were not new tools, but rather using existing tools with new perspective and integrating different systems to the whole: - There is no special environment taken into use between the members and the principle is that you have to keep it as simple as possible. Then it works and doesn t have any difficulties to use it. For communication and knowledge sharing are used only tools, which are widely in use for everyday communication. Lack of transparency and control aspect is related with the goals, roles and responsibilities when using the tool who does what, who is responsible for what, to whom to turn to with what kind of issues etc: 11

14 - There are very good tools, but usually the problem tend to be that not everybody in the project are actually comfortable with them and sometimes it presumes deciding on the protocols on who is got which role within the tool. Stages of community development It is identified that virtual communities of practices (VCoPs) go through different phases throughout their life (Dubé, Bourhis, & Jacob, 2006). This statement is based on proposal of several authors (e.g., Gongla & Rizzuto, 2001; McDermott, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002) as evolution models. Age defines the period of time the VCoP had to experiment and to progress and varies from young (less than a year) to old (more than 5 years). A VCoP may also face some difficult challenges when, at the end of the cycle, it has to reinvent itself. The stages of community development are define and characterized as follows (Dubé et al., 2006): 1. Potential. A loose network of people juggles with the idea of forming a CoP; structure, members, and common interests are identified, selected, and agreed upon. 2. Coalescing. The CoP is officially launched. The CoP activities are starting. The main focus is on establishing value. 3. Maturing. The CoP develops a stronger sense of itself. While its core practice is better defined, members see gaps and develop new areas of knowledge. The CoP goes from sharing tips to developing a comprehensive body of knowledge. Members know each other; a level of trust has developed. 4. Stwardship. The CoP goes through a stage where the biggest challenge is to sustain its momentum. 5. Transformation. An event a major change in practice or work organization, a large influx of new members, a leadership change, or a high decrease in energy level will trigger the need for renewal. The CoP may start all over again on a new basis or simply fade away and die. The interviewees indicated the stages of networks and collaboration characteristics on following way: - The network was more mature after some (4) years of meetings when the trust was build and people felt more comfortable with each other. On every meeting there was also cultural program and it helped to build the sense of community. The working in the network was not too formal, you could feel human attitude and it motivated to contribute; - You can use tools but before you have to build a trust and people have to know each other; - Meetings are organised not so often and people are rotating all the time, therefore they don t know each other so well and it makes the communication rather modest; - The sense of community takes time; it is not possible that after the period of three years the cluster is ready and sustainable without any financial support. Our experience is that after 5 years of cooperation starts to work, members scan see the results and impact and are starting to value that ; - If people are not interested and there is no interest or motivation anymore, then it might be that there is no need anymore and then it is better to close the project. 12

15 Conclusion and recommendations Results indicated that communities are actively thinking about employing social technologies for knowledge sharing, but several barriers exists that hinder adoption. The initial analysis after the survey showed that there is a need for additional and more in-depth view about used tools for finding out the real purposes and practices of using different tools and technologies. The in-depth analysis can provide guidelines a more effective adoption of social media and address some of the challenges stated in initial survey and also additional challenges identified from the interviews. It can be concluded that all the interviewed communities use several technologies. Still not always was the aim of using tools for sharing knowledge, but sometimes the purpose was just to communicate with the members or share the practical information not knowledge per se. Secondly the study indicated that any tool could build the community sense and replace the face-to-face meetings in real. Technologies should be intertwined with the real life communication. Thirdly it was emphasized that every communities needs a facilitator who takes responsibilities for community building and implementing technologies with needed training. Fourthly the rise of the social media was identified among communities that are using innovative technologies. Those communities mentioned that social media enables spreading the information among larger group of stakeholders and keeps the webpage alive (through feeds). Fifth, communities should try to implement technologies that the members are already using for avoiding the confusion e.g. developing intranet to the webpage instead of start using new space for project management that people have never heard of. As a result, table 4 presents the selection of the possible knowledge sharing tools that could be used by the communities with the aim to share knowledge with the wider audience and within the transnational community. Strengths and Weaknesses that have emerged from the interviews are also listed in order to be able to make a balanced selection for a concrete case. 13

16 Table 4: Selection of knowledge sharing tools for transnational communities and networks Tool/technology Dimensions Aim, Example, Strengths and Weaknesses Facebook Participation Community crates the page to the Facebook with the aim to share information/resources to the followers of their community page. Page can be created by focusing only on own community or on wider audience. By focusing on the community s internal communication, the specific information is shared only with the members. By focusing on the wider audience, the page is accessible for all the members and shared information is informative, commercial, focusing on latest news, achievements and so on. In the latter case, the Facebook becomes as part of the community webpage. Facebook s strength - most of the people are using it anyway; they don t have to register to another system. Facebook s weakness - community members may want to separate the personal life and professional life and not to use the same account as part of the professional community. Online conference tools (Flashmeeting, GoToMeeting, Skype) Participation, Synchronous Online conference tools promote the instant communication and knowledge and information sharing between the community members for increasing the sense of community. One of the members sets up the meeting, shares the link with the others and people join with their own devices to the online meeting. Strength - the possibility to communicate as often as needed and therefor to build the sense of community. The meetings can be in general later re-listened by those members who did not have a chance to participate. The weakness - rather related with the personal barriers than tool people may be passive participants of the meeting GoogleDocs Reification GoogleDocs aims to support collaborative creation of knowledge artefacts. Mainly the GoogleDocs is being used for sharing the documents without sending them via s, but only sharing the link of the document that is saved in GoogleDocs. Other community members who have access to the GoogleDocs materials have a chance to modify the materials or add comments. Strength of the tool is the possibility to save the documents in the shared server, documents are modified in the shared space and therefore the information is updated. In general many people do have the Google account as well, meaning that they don t have to register to the new space. 14

17 Google Drive, Dropbox Project spaces (BaseCamp, Projectplace) Reification Reification GoogleDrive and Dropbox enable to store online the great amounts of the community documents. Documents will be accessed only by selected members or by all the users, depends on the settings. Documents can be managed in different folders. Spaces for project management enable to manage the projects and its different processes. Such spaces are used for creating and storing the project documentation, reports and presentations Weaknesses not suitable for communication, mainly perceived as project planning and reporting tool. Should be combined with more synchronous tools. Successful using of the tool is related with the sense of community the lower sense of the community usually means may indicate that project tools will be used less as well. Intranet Reification Intranet is a system where the community/cluster/organization can communicate. Different intranet solutions can be used for developing the intranet. Most commonly the community s external webpage is combined with the intranet. In that case the community uses some content management system. In such system there is public webpage focusing on external clients, consumers and collaborators. Additionally there is login area where the community members has an access to the information. Depends on the intranet possibilities, there could be additional features like editing documents or commenting materials, chat or forum. Twitter Synchronous, group identity Twitter is an online social networking site (also microblogging service) that enables users to send and read messages of up to 140 characters (tweets). Communities use Twitter usually with the promotion purposes. Strength communities can make their websites alive with the Twitter feed in the website. Also it is one of the quickest ways to spread out the news to the larger audience and create awareness. Weakness Twitter is not for internal communication, more with marketing purposes. Twitter works better for the community if several members continuously tweet. Another weakness is the poor long-term storing capabilities so that Twitter needs to be complemented with a storing tool (such as a weblog or wiki). 15

18 Wiki Weblog Individual profile pages Asynchronous, group identity Asynchronous, group identity Individual identity Individual identity, asynchronous A wiki is a service that enables people to add, modify, or delete content in a collaborative environment. Knowledge sharing via wiki is often focusing more to knowledge creation than just simple information sharing. Usually the content in wiki is being commented, adapted, modified and joint knowledge is being created. Strengths It is easy to collaboratively edit content. Supports very well a strong group identity and forces members to adapt their views to the group. Weakness If there are heavy contributions from a large number of people, Wikis tend to get cluttered and it gets increasingly difficult to get an overview. So at some stage a wiki needs editorial roles and regulations. A weblog is an informational site published on the web and consists of entries/posts typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Weblogs of the communities are usually focusing on external partners and collaborators with the aim to share information and knowledge. Usually such weblogs are open to everyone. Strength - weblogs are one of the easiest and quickest ways to reach the wider audience. Entries in the weblogs are usually open to the comments and therefore interesting discussions may occur. Weakness dynamically updated weblog of the community presumes quite lot of time and therefore persons should be named who are responsible for writing blogposts. Often the community members use some systems (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) for creating their individual profile page with the aim to share their professional knowledge addition to personal information. Communities should take advantage of such individual pages for aggregating the community knowledge is the simplest ways of sharing the information, knowledge and materials with the community members or other contacts. ing list are used for sending the mails directly for all the community members. The weakness of the is that people don t have time to focus on s. Mails for your information are mostly ignored. People don t have time to read them, answer them and to have discussions. 16

19 LinkedIn, MeetUp Group identity Sites of social networking for people in professional occupations where people are contacting with others generally with the professional aim than personal aim. In general the users create their quite expanded CVs and decide to belong to the different groups. Communities or clusters can create their own pages where they share the information and users may become the members of the community or just follow the community in order to be aware of the latest information. Strengths Most people are members in these services, so they are very quick to set up Weaknesses The services are not open and tend to be closed towards outside tools and contents. Therefore the community is dependent on the services offered by the provider, and other services can usually not be integrated easily. Newsletter Group identity, reification, asynchronous Newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Communities that aim to share certain information and news with the collaborators, members and others develop their newsletter on a regular basis and send it in general through e- mail to the subscribers. Social Bookmarking (e.g. Delicious) Reification, asynchronous, group and individual identity Newsletter strength is it easy and quick possibility to send the latest news to everyone who could be aware of the recent activities. Social bookmarking is the process of adding keywords (tags) to pieces of different types of media (resources, like photos, videos, documents, or weblinks) and supporting the systems to become semantic. Tagging is used in the bookmarking when users tag the content which can be later found by the categorization of the content. Such user-generated tagging system is called folksonomy, although still organizations often tend to suggest using pre-defined categories, important terms also emerge in the social tagging process. Strengths - Tagging of the content increases the findability of shared resources, creating awareness of current activities, and collaboration in distributed networks. It is a low-barrier way to share. Weaknesses If there is not sufficient common understanding about the tags, they may be difficult to follow 17

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