2014 marks the 10th birthday of Facebook; I like the joke about Mark Zuckerberg spending all of 2014 personally liking the "Happy birthday Facebook" posts of his one billion users. It will probably be a long birthday party based on the news and blogging coverage so far. And, yes, I'm just about to add to that verbage.
But I'd like to take a different tack. Facebook is not alone in celebrating its 10th birthday in 2014. The Consumerization of IT was first written about in 2004 (well, it was according to Wikipedia) and ServiceNow was born.
So while there might be a lot of buzz about the dawn of social media and Facebook's part in it, IMO Facebook has, just as importantly, dramatically changed the corporate IT landscape. And this corporate influence has been way beyond social.
In many ways "Social ITSM" was a red herring
ServiceNow and other ITSM tool vendor customers and prospects were asking for social ITSM capabilities in the late 2000s on the back of the rise of the general acceptance of social media. ServiceNow duly delivered Livefeed (Facebook-like newsfeeds), chat, and public and corporate social tool integrations. This complemented the existing social and collaboration capabilities of the ServiceNow Community and Wiki.
But many customers were asking for these social capabilities because they were reading about them in the writings of journalists, industry pundits, and analysts. Like knowledge management a decade before it was somewhat removed from the reality of IT and business operations. Corporate IT organizations probably wanted something called "Social ITSM" because it was shiny new technology rather than to deliberately add valuable social capabilities to existing ways of working; or to facilitate IT service consumption and support because employees wanted, or demanded, it. So, in my experience, the real world uptake of Social ITSM was slow.
Now many organizations have refocused on Consumerization
Things changed as we started the new decade, the decade I like to call the "teenies." People (customers, employees, partners, and suppliers) were being influenced less by social in isolation and more by what some called the Consumerization of IT or just Consumerization. Our outside-of-work IT and service experiences were driving our expectations within the enterprise. For IT and other corporate service providers.
IMO it was really the Consumerization of Service, and as such more than what the Consumerization of IT has traditionally been thought to involve. That employees are now enjoying a consumer service experience that includes a focus on ease-of-use, self-service, service request catalogs, anytime and anyplace access, knowledge availability, social or collaborative capabilities, and customer-centric support. Their consumer experiences with companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have changed their expectations of both corporate IT and its service experience.
So "thank you" to the 10-year-old Facebook
These companies and others have played a big part in shaping the future of corporate IT, and way beyond the delivery of social capabilities.
Facebook in particular has been one of the consumer services that have set the bar for the consumer "user experience." Creating something that is just easy to use, whether on a computer or mobile device, where the user doesn't really see that they are using IT. They just do or consume things. And unlike much corporate software, the customer actually wants to use it … If you have time, check out this great Gartner blog on the gulf between corporate and consumer apps from a customer experience POV.
Thus, in its first 10 years, Facebook has irreversibly changed corporate IT for the better. And, on the back of the continued pressure for consumer-like experiences within the enterprise, Facebook and innovative consumer-focused companies like it will continue to change it more.
I personally can't wait.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/
