Measuring Social Software

The document discusses evaluating the success of an IBM collaboration and social networking project. It explores how to define and measure the business value of such initiatives. The document recommends taking a business process approach by identifying critical processes, targeting teams that support those processes, implementing collaboration tools, and monitoring results over time. It introduces the concept of "Return on Contribution" as a metric to understand employee participation and culture change. The metric is a ratio of benefits to costs that does not consider direct monetary costs. An example using social bookmarking data within Lotus Connections is provided to illustrate calculating return on contribution.