The Coming War for the Social Workplace

The hard-nosed competition for billions in corporate software spending is heading for an improbable showdown: Will the boss “like” that product prototyping cost projection? Last week Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud-based corporate software, bought Rypple, a little-known outfit that specializes in creating and observing what is called “the social enterprise” — which uses things like Twitter posts, status badges and Facebook-esque likes to set goals, manage teams and recognize performance.

Rypple is at the far end of a movement to sell companies on the idea that the modern worker, armed with a cellphone and a tablet computer, having access to a nearly infinite amount of computing power in the cloud at all times, is a new kind of beast. Just as our social lives have changed because of Twitter and Facebook, the argument runs, so too must our working lives change. Initially this will mean incorporating more rapid communications and updates about projects in Salesforce’s products for the management of sales and product services. Longer term, software that closely follows and provides feedback on what everyone is doing is “going to drive a new management model for industry.”