Big Blue’s Social Media Numbers
Posted by: Paul in Facebook, Social Media, blogging, businessblog, twitter
From yesterday’s BtoB magazine NetMarketing Breakfast in New York, here are some facts and figures from Adam Christensen, Social Media Communications Manager at IBM, about Big Blue’s use of social media tools:
Internal blogs: 17,000
Members of the Beehive social network: 60,000
Daily page views on IBM’s internal wiki: 1,000,000
Participants in its four Innovation Jams: 500,000
IBMers on Twitter: 3,000
IBMers on Facebook: 52,000
IBMers on LinkedIn: 198,000
For a company with 400,000 employees, those numbers are pretty impressive. They’re all the more remarkable when you consider that, 20 years ago, IBM had one of the most buttoned down command-and-control cultures of any company on the planet.
Adam works on strategy and standards for IBM’s global social media activities. Follow him on Twitter.
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Entries (RSS)
October 30th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I’m not sure that the linkedin number is anything to brag about. Sure, some of it will be HR and managers researching candidates and there are a few enaging in discussion forums, but it would be reasonable to assume that most are on linkedin purely based on insecurity about their jobs at IBM or worse, in the process of loosing them.
You can see this illustrated by the spike in recommendations obtained or requested. I got loads of requests around the layoffs that IBM avoided formally announcing in the US but seperating out divisions and locations and spreding the load. It resulted in a spike of requests from different groups to other linkedin members.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Looking at the internal wiki pageviews, I’m guessing it’s the default homepage when IBMers first fire up internet explorer?
October 30th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
That’s a pretty cynical perspective. I’m sure many of these employees are thinking about their own best interests as well as those of the company, but the fact is that LinkedIn is an excellent way to find sales prospects, prospective business partners, technology experts and others who can help get a job done. I suspect that’s the principle reason why half the employees worldwide are there. The defensive behavior during layoffs is natural for employees of any company.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Going to be interviewing Adam soon for our MediaBlather podcast and that’d be a good question to ask!
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I agree Paul, it is a cynical perspective, I follow Sacha Chua’s blog, she works at IBM and from what she writes the people there are very much about being connected, being innovative and having some fun while they work. Even reading their blogging guidelines the company themselves encourage employees to be active online.