Activity streams: communication as work, not for work

One of the four fundamental keys to social business design is dynamic signal, driven by new modes of content authorship and ownership within companies.

In practice, email communication happens for work. Most office workers would gladly accept less email to deal with every day, unless they're addicted to the dopamine rush of receiving new messages.  A shift to dynamic signal moves employee mentalities and behaviors to communicate as work instead.

Luis Suarez offers an alternative to email: activity streams. He offers five reasons why activity streams work better than email:

1. They permeate throughout transparency and openness
2. They help you, greatly, be done with the obsession to read AND respond to everything
3. They facilitate serendipity and Informal Learning
4. They help flatten organisations and traditionally hierarchical structures
5. They inspire an open knowledge sharing culture

In a recent IBM poll, 49% of respondents stated that they post status updates on social tools for work purposes either a few times a month or never. The data show that corporate inbox codependency is alive and well. But activity streams have started to flow inside organizations and social businesses are starting to architect the aqueducts that will allow them to flow out to the organizational edge.

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