Finger on the Pulse: The Value of the Activity Stream in the Enterprise

Abstract

Abstract. The activity stream, which syndicates user activities across social media, has been gaining popularity on the web. With social media infiltrating the enterprise and higher portions of the workforce becoming accustomed to consuming information through activity streams, it also has the potential to play a key role in shaping the workplace. This work provides a first comprehensive study of an enterprise activity stream. We analyze different characteristics of the stream, its usage through a faceted search-based application, and the way users search it compared to traditional enterprise search. We also discuss various use cases of the stream, both from an individual employee's perspective and from an organizational perspective, exposing the potential value and role of the activity stream in the enterprise of the future.

A Research Literature Study of Enterprise SocialMedia Platforms in Organizations

“…For example, papers explore how users search, filter and interact with activity streams. Guy et al (2013) demonstrated activity streams can pose a new way of searching for information, as it is used to filter than search for information. The feature is used for a variety of purposes, like getting a sense of what colleagues do, to track recent project activities of individuals or groups, search for recent news, and latest updates in discussion, etc.…”

Web Designer / Client Communication: An in-situ development and evaluation of tools and methods to support the collaborative design of interactive technologies

“…Recently, there has been an emphasis by enterprises to develop and adopt socialsoftware platforms for use within the enterprise, enabling employees to keep up to date across the enterprise. These platforms have many benefits for the enterprise (Guy, Steier, Barnea, Ronen, & Daniel, 2013) (Marlow & Dabbish, 2014).…”