A colleague of mine attended a Sharepoint semiar eariler this year. Microsoft representatives there admitted that Microsoft Sharepoint lacks features you would expect from a social software platform. But the promise was that this will be better in Microsoft Sharepoint 2010.
To my knowledge Sharepoint 2010 does not deliver. This is based on what I've learned from the 'File' module in Sharepoint 2010 (My Site - >My Content -> ). In comparison to IBM Connections 3.0 Sharepoints fails on several points:
- MS Sharepoint 2010 uses a silo architecure and is file centric.
- There is no listing of all documents shared with me (the logged on user).
- There is no listing of all public documents I (the logged on user) have access to.
- There is no easy way to share a document from "Personal Docs" to "Shared Docs".
- There is not Social metadata around documents like, who are interested in the document, is the document recommended, has it been download, who has recommended or downloaded it, and discussion around the document is missing.
- Users are unable to se each others tags and notes.
- Not easy to navigate to Sharepoint homescreen.
- Fileupload controls offers not functions to add social data.
- There is not filtering capabilies to search for files.
The fact that there are few social metadata types assosiated with documents, and the types of data you can attach is not visible to others is a big fail. So also the fact that for documents there is not a menu item in SharePoint that says "Share" (You have 'Permissions Tools' though).
I could go on an elaborate more on these shortcomings, but I'll think the above list is enough to convey the message: Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 does not live up to the standards of a Social Software Platform.
You are welcome to prove me wrong on the issues I mention, or list other shortcomings of MS Sharepoint 2010.
