Our team is in a fluid state of communication. We have a physical office, but more than that we have a virtual one that we call “the backchannel.” This is where the bulk of our office talk takes place. It’s more than a water cooler, because we discuss the important as well as the mundane.
For many years we used Yammer, but the service was unreliable (even before Microsoft bought it). So we switch to a new one called SocialCast.
Both services employ hashtags for tagging of information, just like twitter. And because we are web citizens through and through, common hashtags have trended with our team over the years.
This is more than merely anicdotal information. You can learn a lot about your team by which hashtags get used most often.
So… are we #WIN? Or are we #FAIL? Let’s take a look at our hashtags and find out…
Some Are Obvious
All product names are tagged, so we have #standard and #notes. In fact, it may not be an accident that we named #notes with a hashtag.
Some Are Functional
Like #inbox-zero and #sales-update. These are straight work-related tags to give a status update on routine work that gets complete.
Some Are Instructional
Like #must-read and #backchannel-only. “Must Read” is important because we share so many resources and articles and links to other products that we love (and hate), that we needed a mechanism to let everyone in the company know that a certain link is required reading.
I think “Backchannel Only” describes itself. It can be for personal issues, or embarrassing ones. Or 8BIT related items that are not ready for prime time. Out of respect for each other, we honor this one.
Some Are Referential
We’re on a crazy ride and we may or may not write a book about all this one day. Therefore when crazy, interesting, poignant, or downright historic things happen with our business, we tag them with #book. Posterity!
Some Are Cultural
Some are very unique to us and our cultural DNA as friends and coworkers. Here are a few.
- #coffeetom
- #offline
- #sad
- #yesnoapps
- #heads-down
- #wtf
- #chag
- #downlow
If one of us is going to be out of the backchannel for a long period of time, we use #offline. Or if we’re going to be working and we don’t want to be interrupted with TXTs, chats, or what-have-you, we say #heads-down.
Some Are Private
And I certainly won’t be mentioning them here 
.
Our hashtags evolve over time and serve a variety of purposes. They are one of the things that make working for 8BIT both fun and functional.
Back when Yammer first came out, my church jumped on it. I told them it was a waste. No one listened. It ended up being a waste, and the eventually dumped it.
As cool as SocialCast might be, I still feel the same. I am confident that everything that you use it for can be just as easily (if not more effectively) with Google+. Circles are so simple to use, and quick to manage that it makes all the things you’re talking about a cinche! Not to mention you don’t have to worry about yet another social platform to further dilute and compartmentalize your online communications.
If the ultimate goal is streamlined communications with maximum efficiency then I guarantee that taking this to Google+ would be a far better solution. Not only do you rock your internal communications, but you get more familiar with a social platform that could exponentially extend your social reach.
Thoughts?
We did talk about using Circles one gplus came out… but always worried about the possibility of accidentally sharing something to the wrong circle. its nice to be closed and know who all is seeing our info
The fact that it is and island, and completely isolated from any other social network, is incredibly attractive to us.
Not only does it prevent accidentally posting private things like Jared mentioned, but in the same respect it prevents us being notified of a million other things while we are “in the office”.
All good reasoning. I think I’d always take the risk if it means one less account to log in to. I haven’t had many accidents when posting on g+, and when I have, it’s just that I forgot to include “Public”.
Do what works best!