Monkeys With Typewriters: Companies and Social Media in 2010

Update: Meet Jemima at Monkeys Tweetup, part of Social Media Week London.

Two years and countless coffees later Jemima Gibbons', Monkeys with Typewriters: The Myths and Realities of Social Media goes far in debunking the belief that social media is a bad influence in today's modern office; a mere distracter from the real work.

We got in touch with the lovely Jemima to find out how businesses will be incorporating social media in 2010.

The book gets to grips with social media's ability to democratise, errode value chains and remove restrictions on never-questioned-before codes of conduct. In the process it outlines a practical framework for happier, more productive working environments.

The past year has seen a year for change in how businesses understand and use social media. Most notably as a basic marketing and PR tool. We asked her how she thought things would continue to change in 2010:

Jemima:  On the one hand, we'll see savvy businesses really capitalising on the low cost, easy to use nature of social tools, and using these tools to collaborate and innovate. We'll see social media being used in collaborative partnerships as businesses team together to beat the recession. On the other hand, the downturn will cause more short-sighted companies to use sm as a scapegoat and we'll no doubt see increasing bans on social networking during working hours etc as bosses do whatever they can to 'improve' efficiency and reduce costs.

There is a lot of talk on the detriments of email in Monkeys with Typewriters and the "broken trust" connotations its use has. But will 2010 really usher in social media for internal comms and the end of the much maligned email?

Jemima:  Email is just one means of communication and needs to be seen as one of many equally valid options rather than the default tool. The more successful businesses will be those that work in a simple, open way but there will always be others who let themselves get bogged down in complexity and opaque processes.

Chinwag: Do you think there will be more innovation in working practises. More of a move towards an open and collaborative way of doing things?

Jemima I think the real innovation in the next year will take place outside business, much like the dotcom crash of 2000/01 resulted a few years later in the boom in social sites due to out of work but talented people focusing on building fun stuff that mattered to them rather than worry about making money. We'll see a whole raft of innovative ideas come from that space, rather than business per se. Having said that, social entrepreneurship will continue to be a massive growth area, we can expect to see a lot of innovation around the area of social change.

Some things to ponder in 2010.

Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths and Realities of Social Media at Work is available to buy now.

Picture courtesy of Benjamin Ellis. Some rights reserved.