Social media and social networks seem to be conquering human relationships. Corporations
increasingly expect business benefits from such platforms for employee-to-employee networking
and internal collaboration. Firstly however social software platforms have to be introduced
into an organization successfully which often requires strategic and cultural changes before
the new technology effectively supports everyday work tasks and corporate procedures. Companies
will thus be looking for ways to promote usage of the new platforms and influence employee
behavior accordingly. After a review of selected relevant scientific theory and practical
examples of social software analysis this publication analyzes over 50 000 employee
contributions to an internal microblogging platform used over a period of two years in a global
corporation. The subsequent analysis tries to find a metric for organizationally desired
behavior. The nature of microblogging - short text messages that propagate across a network by
means of very basic mechanisms like subscription repeats or responses - seems very well
suited for such a purpose. Two metrics describing an employees influence across the network
and the utility of their contributions as recognized by peers were combined in a single
numerical score. Such scoring could be used as a factor within an employee incentive system
intended to reward extraordinarily active or useful contributors.
