The rat city rollergirls and the potential of social networking sites to support work

The Importance of Publicly Available Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to Entrepreneurs

“…IBM researchers reported Beehive uses in all five of the usage categories presented in Table 1 [7,8,26]. Another study looked at the use of an enterprise proprietary SNS by the Rat City Rollergirls (RCRG), a Roller Derby League of about 100 people located in Seattle, Washington [11]. And researchers investigated the use of Yammer, an enterpriseproprietary, Twitter-like application, deployed within a large (~30,000 employees) Fortune 500 company [29].…”

“…Their SNS serves as a place where league members build and maintain relationships with each other. League members use their SNS to conduct such activities as planning happy hours and craft nights, sharing photos and YouTube clips, and asking for help with house sitting [11].…”

“…IBM employees present themselves on Beehive by posting personal photos, discussing hobbies, highlighting Finding people who share similar interests [7,29] Participating in professional groups [28] People sensemaking [7] Learning about colleagues to prepare for an initial conversation [25] Keeping in contact with others [7,8], media sharing (photos and videos) [11] Finding business partners [23], recruiting employees [28] Planning offline activities [11] Developing associations [13], strengthening relationships through information exchange [25], Increasing feelings of connectedness [30] Soliciting help [11] Managing contact information [23], keeping a relationship alive after meeting someone in person [25] Promoting projects to executives (potential supporters) [7] Building social capital by connecting contacts to each other [25] Staying in touch with past colleagues and alumni [23,25,28] …”

“…Finding out what other individuals are working on [7,29] Finding out what other individuals are working on [25], awareness of what other groups are working on [30], awareness of others' job statuses [25] Awareness of others' moods and personal lives [7] Awareness of others' moods and personal lives [25] Awareness of others' physical location and travel plans [7] Awareness of others' physical location and travel plans [25] Awareness of specific project and task statuses [11] Awareness about the company and the industry [29] Organization Socialization Integration of new and off-site organization members [11,26] Increased group cohesion [7] Problems with SNSs in the workplace Managing multiple profiles [7] Boundary regulation [25,28] Noise-to-value problems [29] Targeted advertising and location tracking [28] Technologies in the Workplace CSCW 2015, March 14-18, 2015, Vancouver, BC, Canada their professional experience, and describing their goals. IBM researchers note that "identity management and people sensemaking are tightly coupled" and that technology design plays a role in how identities are crafted and interpreted online [7].…”

“…One participant requests project updates through the SNS by posting questions such as "Who is responsible for this project and where are you at?" In addition, the teams in the league use their SNS to track participation at practice, which determines whether or not a member can participate in the next bout [11].…”