Humans are naturally social. Progressive organizations have created a unique, differential advantage by becoming social. Social media has exploded over the last few years.
Businesses are blogging, building their YouTube channels, tweeting and cultivating their LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages. Yet few have capitalized on the most impactful way to leverage the social web: building their own social community.
Symantec is saving millions of dollars per year while building customer loyalty with their developer community.
Twitter, Intel and Paypal are supercharging their developers with their own communities. NASCAR has built a high value base from their fan base. Even the government is enabling people to purchase more effectively (insert joke here) with the GSA community.
Thousands of forward thinking brands have moved beyond just building their tribes on social media sites. They have moved past just renting the joy of owning their own community.
Why now
Corporate social communities are not new. They have been called intranets, extranets, knowledgebases and Enterprise 2.0. But these technical marvels of modern business were historically only practical for those with very large budgets and/or those who were technologically adept in custom software development and management. Even if you did have the budget and the expertise, the majority of communities were clunky, unintuitive and difficult to enhance.
As luck would have it, the open source revolution has struck again, making what was once a luxury for only large organizations accessible for all. For those who have the bucks, they can now spend their efforts building the ultimate experience, not just a bunch of expensive features.
The power behind the solution
So what is this miracle solution? It is called
Drupal Commons . It is free and open source. It is also Drupal so you have complete flexibility and you know it scales into the largest enterprise.
You will be hearing a lot more about Commons in the future. But TONIGHT you can here about it from the creators themselves, Acquia. The Dallas Drupal Users Group is hosting a
special meetup event to learn more about how Commons is leading the social media ownership revolution. We hope to see you all tonight!
