IBM Boosts Social Network With Feed for Facebook, Twitter
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), the largest computer services provider, has bolstered its social networking tool for companies by integrating e-mail and adding a news feed with Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. (FB)
Context & Ripple Effects
The move lands in a rough stretch for both parties' narratives. Facebook has spent the past two weeks absorbing bad news — a [[a:none|share price]] down more than 50% since its May IPO, automated purges of bogus Likes, and Mark Zuckerberg's September 11 admission that betting on HTML5 for its mobile apps was a mistake — while IBM had just extended its core franchise with the zEnterprise EC12 mainframe line on August 28.
Against that backdrop, IBM folding e-mail plus live Facebook and Twitter feeds into its corporate social tool reads as two things at once: the largest computer-services provider pulling consumer social streams behind the enterprise firewall, and Facebook gaining a presence in workplace software at a moment when its investor story badly needs new distribution beyond consumer advertising.
First-order effects
- Corporate users of IBM's social networking tool get one surface combining internal e-mail with public Facebook and Twitter news feeds, collapsing the split between the company intranet and the open social web.
- Facebook and Twitter gain routine placement inside enterprise software, extending where their content is consumed without either company building workplace products of its own.
Second-order effects
- For Facebook, whose stock slide since the May IPO has put every non-advertising use case under scrutiny, enterprise integrations like this one broaden the platform's business relevance at a time when Zuckerberg has just conceded strategic missteps on mobile.
- Vendors selling standalone corporate e-mail and internal social tools now compete against a bundled feed-plus-mail offering from the largest player in computer services, pressuring them to aggregate consumer streams themselves.
Third-order effects
- If consumer platforms keep licensing feeds into enterprise tools, the line between internal collaboration systems and public social data thins, turning social activity into a standing input for corporate software rather than an external distraction.
- That pattern positions large services integrators like IBM as the brokers of social data for businesses — a role neither the platforms nor traditional IT vendors occupy alone.
The trend: Enterprise software is absorbing consumer social streams, with IBM pulling Facebook and Twitter content behind the corporate firewall as the platforms hunt for value beyond consumer advertising.