Teachable moments from NASA's social media project

If your boss "friended" you on Facebook but then "unfriended" you, would that be considered a hostile employment action?

Officials at NASA concluded that it would and, consequently, they set up their internal “Spacebook” social media system to avoid that scenario, according to NASA social media expert Emma Antunes.

“We decided you cannot have [social medial] ‘friends’ at work. It has to be a win-win for everyone,” said Antunes, project manager for Spacebook and  Web manager for the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In NASA’s Spacebook, no friending is allowed; everyone is connected to everyone, she said.

Antunes offered several other lessons learned from NASA’s Spacebook experience during the Virtual FOSE conference on July 21. NASA set up the internal social networking system to allow for collaboration among employees a year ago; it has been a much talked-about example of how federal agencies are using Web 2.0 technologies.

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“Having it on the intranet changes the focus,” Antunes said. “We are using the enterprise tools to benefit the organization.”

Creating the online system and inviting people to use it is not enough to ensure an active and creative system, Antunes said. Managers should expect to spend 50 percent of their time in outreach, encouraging and demonstrating use of the technology, she said.

Listening to users’ feedback--especially criticism in the early stages--is extremely important, Antunes added. Managers should be prepared to make changes to the system to respond to complaints, and by doing so they will foster more participation among employees. “When people feel heard, they are more likely to participate, “ she said.

Setting up metrics to measure success, as well as treating the social media experience as a project to be managed, also are helpful approaches.

Also, preparing to deal with spam and negative comments among members is best done in advance, she said. Forum moderators should be vigilant because conversations can happen quickly on social media systems, and if the moderators are absent at key times, that could be a major problem.

“People expect to hear something within hours or even minutes,” Antunes said.

At NASA, no major policy changes were needed to begin using the new system.

“At NASA, we don’t do social media because it is cool,” Antunes said. “We do it for a business goal.”