We are all social creatures. We like to share things with our friends, with our families. But do we want to take the step to sharing amongst our colleagues?

For some time, I have been a supporter of Flud, the social news app that allows you to influence what others read and vice versa, and until now, it has been a way to share with people you follow. However, in the coming weeks, a new version of Flud will be released to a few businesses to beta test, along with - perhaps - an update for general users.

My question to you is why would a business want to have their employees be able to share news, and would you like to use a product like this with your colleagues, or team?

BOSS.

By "Boss", I assume you are querying the role of the team or business leader in the context of a social news application. This is certainly an interesting thought.

Perhaps I can add a related question. How can an application such as Flud 3.0 allow every member of a team to have the same influence, promoting equality, and reducing the noticeable presence of a 'boss' figure?

Right after the recent Flud announcement, I saw Graham share his thoughts and I swiftly questioned the need for such a product:

twitter.com

My basis for questioning was based purely on my ignorance of a target market actually existing. I think they have a great product, I think it's beautifully designed and I now know there is a real market for it:

twitter.com

I guess the benefit of such a platform is in the diversity of the information shared. It's all to easy to get stuck in your own bubble of world politics and news.

In an environment with a huge variety of people, comes many perspectives and opinions; any app, product or service that encourages this, must be championed.

I would like to use something like this.

The update will definitely be available to general users as well. There are a lot of new features that have been creating specifically to benefit businesses, but the experience of reading and sharing news will be the same if not better for current or future users that don't wish to add their company!

(I wasn't sure if that was public yet.)

This is interesting. Everything you say makes me more anxious to try the update, both within a team and alone. I'm sure whatever you have come up with will be very nice, especially some of the new things in profiles.

It's really nice to understand that Flud for businesses will be Flud, within a business, nothing more or less limiting.

With so many people using Twitter/Facebook to extend their influence inside their industry it makes sense to network within a company. Also, reading industry news shows you're intelligent/on top of things and it might be too much to send a blog post to your boss to show them that, but it's less friction to share via a tool like Flud. It's a way to communicate to your team that you have good ideas without being pushy/egocentric.

This is a perfect explanation. So, it bridges the gap between traditional social media which is too busy and 'social' and an email, which is too personal and important; and cluttering.

Approx 2-3 years ago we (large MR company I work for) looked at the market for improving internal communications via social sharing. We completed several trials and chose to try out the Yammer tool. We liked Yammer because it looked and worked just like Facebook (or did back then) - you can use it to share any and all info with people who are genuinely interested in the topic.

Maybe the new Flud App is just another Chatter/Yammer tool - I've signed up for early access so hopefully I'll find out.

In-between times some groups within the business have really taken to the tool and others just plain ignored it. For those engaged groups I can think of several examples of genuine/realised benefit.

Now how to engage with the other groups?

Hey Ian! Flud has really expanded on internal communications by making it a more social and enjoyable experience. Like you are saying, some people end up ignoring the tool the company is choosing to use because there is no incentive to get engaged with content and co-workers.

It's great that you signed up for early access. We are still going through the companies who have signed up and we are hoping to get the tests out soon!

Thanks Vittoria - I'm eager... :)

There is no question that sharing knowledge/opinion within a business is essential, although perhaps tiered to some extent to retain relevancy. There is nothing more frustrating hearing a sales team explaining something to a client incorrectly because they have not seen the same data that the marketing department has.

I've been sharing stuff with my coworkers and project teams since the dawn of the 28.8kb modem ;) - the tools may differ and is important for the adoption but anything that is non-obtrusive and allows people to choose themselves how much they want to participate and take part in then you're off to a good start. I've had extremely good results using Yammer. You must be aware that the 30/70 rule almost always applies (30% are active and the rest are passive) but also remember that a majority of passive users report that they appreciate being able to take part in the shared content at their leisure.

We emphasize sharing where I work (The Motley Fool) - it's a major part of our culture of learning. We will differentiate on a few core things that we do better or first, but we can waste time reinventing things for which there are already great solutions if we're not paying attention to what's going on around us.

I really like the idea of Flud creating private sharing for businesses, but for companies like ours that already have a "full-service" portal that does sharing in addition to internal documentation, reporting, etc, it would be tough to take a step back in the non-sharing areas (even though Flud's execution is very slick).