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Last week, I was introducing my new employee to her My Site when we paused for a minute at the My Profile page. I have to wonder if I am alone in thinking that too much is being made of the Social features in SharePoint. Every time someone brings up the social thing, I want to say “excuse me, but we’re trying to get some work done.” Granted, I am a lifelong geek, and I have a tainted history with all things social, but I have to believe there are other small organizations trying to do big things in SharePoint, that find these features curious at best. Social? We are about 30 people, we work in one office and when we want to be social, we socialize. We go for coffee, we eat lunch, we stop in someone’s office and chat, or we go out for a few beers. When we go to SharePoint, it’s usually because we need to do some work.

I realize that social media is the current rage, and Microsoft needs to play in that large arena. I also realize that large organizations can benefit from tapping into the energy of the individuals working for them but sometimes I feel that SharePoint wants to be one more distraction in my day. I also worry that SharePoint will be spread too thin over time to remain relevant in core areas like ECM. I love SharePoint because it helps me work with others on projects in which we are all involved. I like that it allows me to quickly bring people on board a project team and that it provides a set of simple, consistent mechanisms for letting us all contribute to that project. I don’t worry about the fact that the only difference between our 2007 sites and our 2010 sites are the changes Microsoft made. I don’t worry that my coworkers will meet my new employee in person before they meet her online, and I don’t worry that I might be left out of an important project because someone doesn’t know who I am, who I work for or what I do. I realize SharePoint is a platform that has to support large organizations as well as small, and I do not want to hobble the large company because “a little is enough for me, thank you”. Still, I shake my head when I realize it is easier to connect my social musings with Exchange than it is to move email into SharePoint.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want someone at a company our size to decide not to implement My Sites because they seem like Facebook-lite. There is real benefit in My Sites, particularly for small companies. Personal storage, personal content management and the ability for individuals to share what they want with whom they want to share it are all great features. I also like that I can comment on a document or a website and have my coworkers be able to find those comments. Giving people these options relieves the stress on small IT shops and helps people to learn more about SharePoint. Proper use of the storage options in My Sites also helps to prevent project sites and document libraries from being corrupted. Our shared folders grew into a dumping ground precisely because people needed to share documents but didn’t have an option other than to attach them to emails. For us, I think we will urge people to set the My Content page as their default My Site.