Activity Streams vs. Discussion Forums
Social technology is changing how people communicate and share information both on the consumer Web and within the enterprise. In particular, activity streams (a.k.a. newsfeeds) are becoming a central focal point for users to engage in conversation and discussions. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all include activity streams and have quickly challenged traditional Internet discussion forums such as Yahoo Message Boards or Google Groups in the consumer space. Within the firewall, platforms like Microsoft SharePoint have been used to create discussion boards within team sites and portals. Like the consumer space, enterprise discussion forums are also seeing conversations shift to newer enterprise social software with microblogging and activity streams. So which is a better tool for capturing tacit knowledge and Q&A: discussion forums or activity streams?
For many years, discussion forums (a.k.a. discussion groups, discussion boards, message boards) have provided an online place where people can post a question, receive responses, search, browse by topic, and subscribe to alerts via email. Discussion forums actually date back to pre-Internet bulletin boards and Usenet newsgroups and subsequently evolved into thousands of public Internet sites offering discussion capabilities seen today. Discussion forums usually allow uploading of multiple attachments to a post and are multi-threaded showing responses three or four levels deep. They have little restriction on the number of characters within a single post and offer rich text formatting options (e.g., bold, bullets, etc...).
Discussions forums: A Less Restrictive and Secure Place
Within the firewall, discussion forums face different requirements than Internet forums including restrictions around security and compliance. SharePoint discussion lists have some advantages as they leverage the authentication, profiles and security model of the underlying platform. Discussion boards and posts all conform to SharePoint's native security roles (e.g., Reader, Contributor, Owner, custom), and are all security trimmed. This means users without access to a forum or topic won't see it. Discussions in SharePoint can be accessed via a Web browser or users can send inbound email to a discussion list or connect the list to Outlook for easier participation. Attachments, rich text and embedded images are all included. SharePoint discussion boards leverage the platform's "list" content model for storing content, adding custom fields, custom views, exporting and structuring the categorization of discussion topics. Discussions in SharePoint also conform to branding theme/CSS changes made to the site or portal.
While discussion forums have stood the test of time, today's world of information overload and social media has challenged the user engagement model of discussion boards. Social networking has introduced activity streams as a single aggregated feed of discussions. Streams offer an easier way for users to subscribe, find, post and contribute to existing discussions. Gone is the hierarchical categorization of topics for browsing. Social activity streams use microblogging and hashtagging to provide context about topics, Q&A, knowledge being shared and trending topics.
The Challenge for Online Forums
Generally, people don't have time today to browse a Web page showing a list of dozens of discussion topics. People are "pulled" into a discussion by subscribing to community events and following individuals all within their activity stream—a stream they access on multiple devices anywhere anytime. Activity streams simply provide a much faster and more visible means for users to engage.
As evidenced in the consumer space, back in October of 2011, Facebook removed their discussion tab altogether in favor of the activity stream. Public discussion board sites such as Quora have also attempted to evolve the discussion board to include an activity stream as the engagement point for users. LinkedIn Groups have exploded offering discussion capabilities with group level streams and visibility of contributions that pull one's connections into the discussions. Of course, there is also Twitter-one big stream of discussions where hashtags are used for context, uniqueness and filtering of news and conversations of all kinds. Twitter has leveraged the speed of sharing and conversation making it a global destination for discussion and news.
When it comes to activity streams on SharePoint, the out-of-the-box social functionality of SharePoint 2010 is limited when compared to LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Vendors such as NewsGator address SharePoint's limitations by building consumer-like social capabilities within the platform. With both secure private streams and more public streams, NewsGator offers a rich social user experience, filtering, enterprise Q&A, hashtagging, @targeting, ideas, news and more. Enhancing the social computing capabilities of SharePoint will create that "pull" of users into discussions that are occurring within the stream.
Activity Streams Engage Users
In the end, online discussions are only as good as the people, information and knowledge contributed to them. There are limitations to activity streams when compared to discussion boards. Some character, rich-text and single-attachment limitations are just a few. As a result, activity streams may not always replace discussion boards in every use case. For example, some heavily R&D-focused organizations might utilize traditional discussion boards for rich scientific or product discussions. Generally, any use case with requirements for a more structured approach to Q&A or knowledgebases might still find value in discussion forums as opposed to microblog discussions in activity streams. And we'll likely see online discussions evolve into a hybrid approach of streams and discussion forums that satisfy all use cases. It's simply important to recognize that activity streams create a viral effect and "pull" of people into online discussions making it easier for those that have questions to connect with those experts with the answer.
As a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth Managed Partner, NewsGator delivers robust social technology to the enterprise with proven scalability and security. Microsoft honored them as its 2011 US Partner of the Year. For additional information follow them on Twitter @newsgator or visit www.newsgator.com.