Stowe Boyd

Initial Straw Poll On Microstreams In Business

I have been testing out various email tools to get folks involved in the research we’re doing this summer, and one of the tools has a survey capability. So I asked a handful of questions to a group of about 150 contacts, and getting about 35 responses. I intend a more rigorous survey in the coming weeks — with a larger base of contacts once I have settled on the tools to do that — but in the meantime, here’s some stats.

1. Is your organization using microstreaming tools as a part of everyday business?

89% say yes, and 6% plan to. Obviously heading toward ubiquity (cum grano salis, since this is an early adopter group).

2. If you are using or have used microstream tools in your organization, were they general purpose tools (like Twitter and Facebook) or tools designed for business (like Yammer, Socialtext, etc.)?

Only a quarter are using tools designed specifically for business; I wager that will change as the business tools mature.

3. What microstreaming tools have you personally used?

Mostly its the general, ‘consumer’ tools; Yammer seems to have the jump on the others in the survey, although I omitted IBM Connections (d’uh).

4. What features do you want to have supported in a microstreaming solution for business?

Every feature was desired by at least half of the respondents, so a better survey technique would have them order or weigh their choices, I think. It does demonstrate a hunger for more sophisticated streaming applications for business, since no product has all of these at this point.

 5. How large is your organization?

Skews toward smaller companies, so results with large companies would like vary significantly.

 6. Where is your company headquartered?

Cross tabulating the earlier answers by country and company size would be nice, but I don’t think I can with this survey tool. I need a more sophisticated tool, or raw data that I can dump into excel and cross tab.

Findings And Next Steps

I was surprised by the numbers of people trying to use these tools in everyday business; again, I think that is a function of the set of people and the size of the companies. The most important observation to take away might be the desire for a broad range of functionality — CRM, file sharing, calendar integration, and so on — which is way in advance of today’s tools.

I am likely to undertake subsequent surveys using Squarespace forms, since then I can get access to the individual entries, which will allow complete cross tabulations.