Comments on: The Stupidest Feature In SharePoint http://blog.strategicheading.com/2008/12/20/the-stupidest-featur-in-sharepoint/ G. Oliver Young's blog about business strategy and technology. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:04:17 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: mesothelioma law suites So, What About Enterprise Social Networking? « zycd.net.cn http://blog.strategicheading.com/2008/12/20/the-stupidest-featur-in-sharepoint/comment-page-1/#comment-757 mesothelioma law suites So, What About Enterprise Social Networking? « zycd.net.cn Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:13:48 +0000 http://blog.strategicheading.com/?p=242#comment-757 [...] week later, Oliver posted his very similar conclusions on the matter in The Stupidest Feature in Sharepoint (I bolded the last sentence for emphasis on the [...] [...] week later, Oliver posted his very similar conclusions on the matter in The Stupidest Feature in Sharepoint (I bolded the last sentence for emphasis on the [...]

]]> By: Tom Grant http://blog.strategicheading.com/2008/12/20/the-stupidest-featur-in-sharepoint/comment-page-1/#comment-161 Tom Grant Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:55:22 +0000 http://blog.strategicheading.com/?p=242#comment-161 While I'm not a huge fan of the implementation, what you're describing is not the most stupid feature in SharePoint. In fact, viewed from one angle, it may not even be social networking. I think what MSFT was trying to do here was create a starting point for collaboration. Work with these people regularly? Well, then, let's make them colleagues, and create a workspace for sharing stuff. There are pros and cons to this approach, and to the opposite approach (create the workspace, then identify the people who need access to it). Unfortunately, this approach to collaboration doesn't solve the Balkanization puzzle (lots of separate and seemingly unrelated workspaces and sites) that appears in many SharePoint implementations. In fact, by creating these workspaces on the fly, this "social networking" feature might exacerbate the problem. By the way, my biggest gripe with SharePoint (and nominee for Most Stupid Feature) is linking by URL to content already within SharePoint. Since everything is URL addressable, and in theory I should be able to browse the hierarchy of all content within a site, why oh why do I still have to cut and paste the URL from one piece of SharePoint content when I add a reference to it in another? Ugh. While I’m not a huge fan of the implementation, what you’re describing is not the most stupid feature in SharePoint. In fact, viewed from one angle, it may not even be social networking.

I think what MSFT was trying to do here was create a starting point for collaboration. Work with these people regularly? Well, then, let’s make them colleagues, and create a workspace for sharing stuff. There are pros and cons to this approach, and to the opposite approach (create the workspace, then identify the people who need access to it).

Unfortunately, this approach to collaboration doesn’t solve the Balkanization puzzle (lots of separate and seemingly unrelated workspaces and sites) that appears in many SharePoint implementations. In fact, by creating these workspaces on the fly, this “social networking” feature might exacerbate the problem.

By the way, my biggest gripe with SharePoint (and nominee for Most Stupid Feature) is linking by URL to content already within SharePoint. Since everything is URL addressable, and in theory I should be able to browse the hierarchy of all content within a site, why oh why do I still have to cut and paste the URL from one piece of SharePoint content when I add a reference to it in another? Ugh.

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