Here are some wrap-up thoughts from a couple of days at the Web Content 2008 conference in Chicago last week. I thought there was a fascinating dichotomy between days 1 and 2 of the conference (at least in the sessions that I attended.) I'm not sure if the conference organizers intentionally positioned the talks like this, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Day 1 was a crash course in Web 2.0 offerings, with speakers exciting the sold-out crowd by talking about releasing control of your brand, letting users create your content, hypersyndication, and the new rules of marketing. Attendees left all fired up about the possibility of using Social Software in their enterprises.

Day 2, however, was a jarring jolt back to reality. The day began with Human Factors International's Jerome Nadel talking about the necessity of employing tried and true usability testing best practices, and then Welchman Consulting's Lisa Welchman claiming that Web 2.0 efforts will fail without employing governance practices through Web Operations Management. These keynotes were then followed by several presentations (including my own) on the pitfalls and trappings of any software selection and implementation endeavor.

So, the conference served as a microcosm for the state of the current Social Software industry. There is certainly fervor in the marketplace to adopt Social Software in the enterprise. However, we are seeing many enterprises quickly jump into the Social Software arena without performing the proper due diligence that they would with other enterprise software like Web Content Management, Enterprise Content Management, or Enterprise Search. Our research for The Enterprise Social Software Report 2008 showed that many early adopters of social software are encountering unforeseen pitfalls when implementing these tools, even as they reap obvious benefits as well. Lesson: do not lose sight of proper best practices when it comes to selecting, implementing, and managing social software.

I am a firm believer that Social Software is here to stay and can be extremely powerful within the enterprise. However, like any new technology, there is bound to be some growing pains. The extent of these pains will almost certainly be mitigated by how enterprises are able to apply the lessons learned from other content technologies. Social Software seems revolutionary, but many of the same rules apply.