Towards an understanding of social software: the case of Arinia

Stuart J. Barnes
University of East
Anglia, UK
Stuart.Barnes
@uea.ac.uk
Martin Böhringer
Chemnitz University of
Technology, Germany
Boehr@hrz.tu-
chemnitz.de
Christian Kurze
Chemnitz University of
Technology, Germany
Kurze@hrz.tu-
chemnitz.de
Jacqueline Stietzel
Chemnitz University of
Technology, Germany
Jsti@hrz.tu-
chemnitz.de


Abstract
This paper presents the case of Arinia, a custom-
made piece of social software with strong similarities
to today’s microblogging applications. Arinia has been
in use in a medium-sized technology company for more
than 10 years; therefore, it is considered that the
software is a valuable source of insights into the
underlying principles of microblogging in an
enterprise context. Due to the unique nature of the case
we used an interpretive approach to learn about
Arinia, its users and their contexts, involving semi-
structured interviews, a survey, quantitative usage data
and an excerpt from the posting base in order to
achieve a comprehensive view on the case. The results
suggest that there is reasonable potential in sharing
micro-level information inside organizations. In
particular, the findings provide evidence of enabling
factors and allow us to introduce the concept of the
‘information food chain’. Together, these findings
present a foundation for further research on current
microblogging applications.


1. Introduction

The rising popularity of Twitter has recently
encouraged ideas about how to leverage the
microblogging approach within the enterprise. There
are a number of professional software tools and early
case studies are available. Notwithstanding, it is still
not clear exactly what microblogging – and especially
enterprise microblogging – really means. This
discussion in the blogosphere and in various research
papers shows that microblogging is more than a short
form of blogging. Rather it could be seen as an
approach for sharing activity information and
information „nuggets‟ implemented with social
software components (e.g. communities, profiles and
open API).
This paper presents the case of Arinia – a custom-
made piece of social software. While its technology
and appearance do not fulfill modern expectations for
software its usage is very similar to microblogging
applications today. Since Arinia has been in use for
more than ten years now this unique case provides
valuable source of insights into the underlying
principles of microblogging in an enterprise context. In
this paper we use an interpretive approach in order to
achieve a comprehensive view of the case.
The organization of this paper is as follows. We
discuss microblogging and its historical predecessors
in the following section before describing the research
methodology in section 3. The case is presented in
section 4 starting with a background overview
followed by an in-depth analysis of the findings.
Finally, section 5 presents a discussion of the results
and draws conclusions and implications for research
and practice.

2. Background

The principle of microblogging is best known via
its most famous application, Twitter. Users have their
own public microblog where they can post short
updates. Other members can be „followed‟ by adding
them to one‟s personal network. As with weblogs, the
messages appear in chronological order on the user‟s
start page. Microblogging services often support a
wide range of contribution possibilities. For example,
messages to Twitter can be posted via mobile text
messages, desktop clients or several third party
applications.
Microblogging is a very new type of application.
Research papers on the topic are still rare. While a
good body of knowledge is developing around Twitter
itself ([2], [5], [7], [8], [9], [11], [15]) there is less
research on the further development of microblogging
for adoption in the enterprise ([3], [4]) and conceptual
improvements of the approach due to enhanced
technology ([13], [14]) or better visualization [1].
The application of microblogging to the enterprise
is a heavily discussed topic among practitioners.
Gartner suggest that “by 2011, enterprise
microblogging will be a standard feature on 80 percent

of social software platforms” [6]. Various companies
have followed the trend and subsequently launched
tools for professional microblogging. However, the
development of these enterprise applications is mostly
built on the „Twitter model‟ – in an attempt to emulate
its success – and they typically do not publish usage
statistics.
As yet, there is no published research
demonstrating that existing theory can be used to
explain the microblogging phenomenon sufficiently.
Erickson tried to apply Erickson and Kellogg‟s
construction of social translucence to Twitter but found
that it was only partly supported [5]. Barnes &
Böhringer used an extended model of IS continuance
to explain Twitter use continuance [2]. While this work
succeeded in explaining drivers of Twitter usage it
does not explain initial adoption of microblogging and
what the cognitive and social reasons could be. In
learning from the Arinia case we are going to go a step
further in finding a reasonable and richer explanation
model for microblogging usage.

3. Research Methodology

Due to the unique nature of the case being studied
we applied an interpretive approach to learn about
Arinia, its users and their contexts [17]. However, as
suggested by Yin we use other sources of data to
achieve a triangulation and hence a higher validity of
our results [19, pp. 114-118].
Walsham claims that interpretive researchers by
definition cannot be objective as they always are
influenced by their subjective views [18]. In our case
we have a background of previous research on
microblogging and are especially interested in the
implications of the Arinia case with respect to this
phenomenon. Researchers with a dissimilar focus may
have achieved slightly different results as they would
have asked different questions.
The first step of our research was a preliminary
study of Arinia. Based on a demonstration of the tool
and a discussion with the company‟s CEO we
developed a first impression of the case. Using these
insights we created a semi-structured interview which
was structured into various parts: „usage behavior‟,
„perceived advantages‟ and „perceived disadvantages‟.
The company was asked to suggest users of Arinia
with heterogeneous backgrounds and different usage
habits. Overall, we had 8 interview partners from a
wide range of corporate functions including sales,
marketing, production, procurement and R&D. The
interviews took place during March 2009. They were
recorded onto an audio capture device and later
transcribed. The length of the interviews differed
between 20 and 45 minutes.
The interviews were analyzed using a loose,
qualitative coding procedure. They were first
structured through categories resulting from the
preliminary study. Both the preliminary study and the
main interviews were analyzed using open coding to
identify salient concepts. In analyzing the interviews
we discovered several significant patterns, but also
noted opposite opinions whenever they emerged.
In order to evaluate the findings with a broader
sample of participants we conducted a survey (n=35;
representing 85% of Arinia‟s users) with concepts
developed from the interviews. We extracted key
statements which either were said jointly by several
participants or were rated to be controversial by the
researchers. These were coded into short propositions
and survey participants were asked to rate their
agreement with these statements using a 5-item Likert
scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).
Additionally, there were two additional questions
asking about reading/writing frequency (5-item coding:
1 = never/very seldom, 2 = once per month, 3 = once
per week, 4 = once per day, 5= several times per day)
and the duration for writing a posting (5-item nominal
coding: less than 1 minute, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10
minutes, or more than 10 minutes). Finally, we asked
for the organizational unit of the participant and
provided a field for free comments. The survey was
implemented using an online survey tool
(LimeSurvey). The link was published in Arinia
including a reminder posting after one week. The
survey was open for 15 days.
Further, we had the possibility to study an excerpt
from the tool‟s posting base and the tool itself (i.e. the
web interface). This enabled us to validate our findings
in conducting a hermeneutic text analysis [10]. We also
looked at a specific „pinboard‟ in detail (see below for
description of the system and the pinboard feature);
this was a typical project pinboard for an already
finished project. The results of the text analysis
enhanced our understanding of Arinia‟s characteristics
and represent the principal evidence for our assessment
regarding the tool‟s similarity to microblogging.
Finally, we used quantitative usage information in
the study. This data includes anonymous user profiles
and the complete pattern of historical usage
development dating from 1998.
Data triangulation from the four sources –
interviews, survey, text analysis, and usage data –
ensures a comprehensive view of the case using
multiple perspectives. A summary of the sources and
how they were triangulated is given in Table 1.

4. Case study

4.1. Setting

Arinia is a custom-made development of Megware,
a Germany-based manufacturer of high-performance
computers and IT technology. The company‟s focus is
on customer-oriented, tailor-made and innovative
system solutions and services, and it is engaged in
research and development, production, consultation
and distribution. Founded in a garage in 1990, the
company is now a high-tech-oriented firm operating in
the highly knowledge-intensive IT sector.
The history of Arinia dates back to the 1990s when
Megware was in the retail business and ran more than
30 subsidiaries in different German cities. At this time,
the tool was developed as a fast and secure internal
alternative to email. Accordingly, the email-like direct
messages were the main functionality of the program.
However, Arinia had another feature: the so-called
„pinboard‟. This was meant for the broadcasting of
announcements to staff. While this played a secondary
role at the beginning, the share of usage of the
pinboards increased substantially until a steady
equilibrium of equal usage was reached between direct
and public messages (see Figure 1). While the use of
pinboards is part of the company‟s policy today its
rising adoption was user-driven. Interestingly, this
development correlates with a major transition in
Megware‟s strategy as it transformed itself from a
consumer- and small business-oriented IT
manufacturer with multiple subsidiaries to a highly
specialized supplier of complex high-performance
systems after the dot-com crash of 2000. Today, the
company has approximately 45 employees.
The functionality of Arinia is surprisingly similar to
microblogging. First of all, our text analysis showed
that the character of the postings is short. Most
interview partners and survey participants need circa
one minute or less to write a posting. Typical postings
include: “Call with customer .... He asked for ...” or
“Task closed”. Secondly, as with Twitter, new postings
can be in reply to former postings. Third, postings are
open to a wide range of users without explicit
addressees. Furthermore, there are a number of
software clients for Arinia: next to the most-used
desktop client there is a web client and a mobile client
for Blackberry devices. The latter is heavily used by
the company‟s executive board and salespersons.

Data Source Type of data Description Triangulation
Primary sources
Semi-structured
interviews
Qualitative Interviews with 8 users from
different backgrounds (interview
lengths varied between 20 and 45
minutes): the structure of the
interviews resulted from a
preliminary study.
The interviews were the main
source of information. Key
statements and trends from the
interviews were subsequently
evaluated using the survey and
secondary sources.
Survey Quantitative Survey (n=35) evaluating key
findings from the interviews.
The survey was used to evaluate
key findings from the interviews
with a broader participant base.
Secondary sources
Usage data Quantitative Different SQL-extracted
information from Arinia‟s
database: an anonymous user list
with unit assignment and posting
frequency (as the basis for Figure
2), monthly posting statistics since
1998 (as the basis for Figure 1),
and the number of pinboards .
The usage data gave objective
evidence for key findings from the
interviews.
Text and artifact
analysis
Qualitative Hermeneutic text analysis [10] of a
single pinboard (a finished project)
using Arinia‟s web client.
This data allowed us capture a
„direct‟ view of Arinia and
therefore enabled objectifying of
participants‟ statements.

Table 1. Data sources and triangulation.

However, not surprisingly, there are differences
between Arinia and today‟s Twitter-like tools. A basic
distinction is the concept of multiple pinboards. This
means that one can create a new pinboard that is either
public or only open to selected members. This concept
was also discovered before in an earlier case study of
the software tool Communote, the developers of which
consider as a microblogging tool [3].
Further, due to its early creation date, Arinia has
strong borrowings from Usenet clients. The postings
are shown in a threaded discussion view instead of the
strictly chronological order that is used by
microblogging tools (although there is an exception:
P2, the microblogging frontend for Wordpress, also
comes with a threaded discussion view). Arinia also
uses the concept of read/unread postings, which is not
the case for most of the microblogging applications,
and comes without the typical following/followers
functionality. The latter seems not to be necessary as
the company, with its 45 employees, has a separate and
stable social network. Instead of social networking
users can decide to subscribe respectively to „follow‟
or unsubscribe respectively to „unfollow‟ a certain
pinboard.
Nevertheless, due to the similarities to
microblogging Arinia can be considered a very near
relative of the web 2.0 tool. Therefore, insights from
this particular case study could provide valuable
implications for microblogging research.

4.2. Usage behavior: the ‘information food
chain’

Arinia is an integral part of the company‟s
communication and information management
architecture. All interview participants told us that they
login to the program and read new postings first when
they arrive at work. Nearly all read new postings
several times during the day. This finding was clearly
supported by the survey data.
A broader spectrum of usage behavior can be found
in writing postings. While some users considered
Arinia as their main tool for task delegation and
communication others post content only once a week
or less. The survey data suggested a correlation
between posting frequency and business unit and the
quantitative usage statistics clearly supports this
connection. Figure 2 visualizes the distinct differences
in content production dependent on the user‟s business
unit based on objective usage data. The four members
of the executive team each post more than 100 postings
per month with the most active user posting 214
„Arinias‟ – an average of ten per working day.
At the other end of the spectrum we find users with
less than 3 postings per month – all belonging to the
production unit. These people use Arinia in breaks only
as they do not work at a desk. However, they still read
postings at least once a day. Therefore, their temporal
absence of a PC cannot be the main reason for their
weak contribution.
In our interviews we found that these users entirely
support Arinia and state that they rely on its
information. Notwithstanding, they have the feeling
that their own information is not that important to other
users. One person further stated that she likes talking
with people face-to-face more than using computer-
mediated communication. While she was aware of the
possible loss of information in ignoring Arinia as a
publishing tool she said that she would know who the
addressee of the information would be and therefore


Figure 1. Bottom-up adoption of the pinboard functionality over time.

could go there directly as this person in most cases
would work just next door.
The usage habits between the two poles of „heavy‟
and „light‟ message posters clearly appears to follow a
concept we might call an „information food chain‟ –
following the biologic concept of eating relationships
in ecosystems. Our interviews showed that the
executive team, sales persons and project managers are
the entry point for the majority of the company‟s
information. Other units such as R&D or services use
this information as the foundation for their work and
therefore for their own information production. At the
end of the information food chain is the production
unit. While workers within the production unit need
information from other units they do not reproduce
information for others since their output is
predominantly not information but a physical product.
This observation fits with the standard workflow of
Arinia. Although there are some cross-sectional
pinboards the whole company and therefore Arinia is
organized towards the customer. The sales persons
create a pinboard when they first gain deeper contact
with a prospective customer. This information space is
the central communication platform for the project
including quotation, development, production and
service. In using this principle Arinia contains circa
7200 pinboards with more than 100,000 postings.
There are pinboards with only a few postings (e.g. if a
quotation does not lead to an order) and highly-
frequented ones.
In our interviews we were particularly interested in
the relationship between Arinia and other tools.
Surprisingly, there were no signs of problems due to
the „media break‟ between e-mail for external and
partly internal use (i.e. the forwarding of external e-
mails) and Arinia. By and large this finding was also
supported by the survey data with a minority of 17% of
respondents agreeing to a problem with respect to the
media break. We would have expected to hear
complaints on this topic, especially from the power
users. However, they managed very well by utilizing
„copy and paste‟ functionality if email content needed
to be reused. Further, a member of the executive team
even emphasized that the media break acts as security
wall as well as a break between internal
communication (which could be informal) and external
communication (which would be at another level).
More problematic than the media break seemed to
be the choice between different communication
channels. We asked questions in the interviews as well
as in the survey regarding whether there would be
problems in choosing the right channel for a piece of
information. While the majority of participants did not
have any problems at all there were users who strongly
agreed that there was indeed an issue. They stated that
they often had uncertainties about whether some
contents belonged to a pinboard in Arinia, a direct
message or another channel (especially face-to-face
communication). Further, the R&D unit also used a
wiki for project data. In this case it seems to be a
difficult discussion to decide which tool to use.
The majority of users even found value in Arinia in
times of absence – such as holidays or after the end of
work. They stated that they could avoid the typical lack
of information after a longer absence. Further, the
executives suggested that the use of Arinia leads to a
better connection with long-term absentee employees
(e.g. those on maternity leave). Related to that, our
findings show that Arinia is clearly the company‟s
central communication platform. We asked participants
to define the importance of different communication
channels following Quan-Haase et al. [12]. Arinia
clearly rates as more important than email, instant
messaging, phone calls and even face-to-face
communication. The latter is the closest alternative
with 40% of users not agreeing that Arinia is more
important (see Figure 3).
Our final observation related to the use of Arinia is
the relative importance of „Arinias‟ compared to
Twitter postings. Most users read or at least scan
through every posting. This also correlates to an earlier

Figure 2. Posting frequency by
organizational unit.

Figure 3. Importance of Arinia compared to
face-to-face communication.

case study on enterprise microblogging [3]. In both
cases organizations were medium-sized with fewer
than 100 microblogging users. It seems clear that such
behavior would not be possible in cases with a much
larger social network. We would expect users in these
cases to act like Arinia‟s users after a longer period of
absence from the system: in these situations they
typically concentrate on the most important topics and
persons and do not read other postings.

4.3. Perceived advantages: awareness and
communication

The participants reacted in very different ways on
the question of Arinia‟s advantages. While some stated
a number of points, others appeared as if they had
never even considered this issue before. We explain
this observation with reference to the long existence of
Arinia. The tool is an accepted part of the company‟s
communication toolset. One participant told us that
“Arinia is part of our equipment. It is not a question
whether to use it or not.” Advantages are relative
opinions and it was noticeable that employees who had
belonged to the company for several years generally
not possess this automatic comparison (all but one of
the interview participants had worked for Megware for
five or more years). In these cases we assisted
respondents by asking them to imagine that they did
not currently have Arinia, which further helped them to
work out perceived advantages.
First of all, our interview participants stated that
Arinia would provide good support for communication.
One survey participant enthusiastically wrote in the
free comment box: “Arinia is the best tool for
communication to my knowledge. It optimizes
collaboration to a maximum.” Except for one
participant who was very new to the company
everybody talked about the software tool in a very
familiar, even intimate, way like it was a „good old
friend‟.
Further, Arinia was seen as a good way for „getting
things done‟. One person told us that “Arinia has no
engaged tone”. Thus, it appeared to be a perfect tool
for closing tasks. In publishing information via Arinia
it reaches the recipient as well as other stakeholders.
This observation might be an interesting starting point
for further research. We will come back to it in the
discussion chapter.
The interview sessions showed that Arinia is a core
source of information for all participants. However, it
was conspicuous that they often named information in
the sense of „what is going on‟. We had a more
detailed look into this matter in the survey when we
asked for opinions with respect to the two statements:
“Arinia provides me with important information for my
direct tasks” and “Arinia provides me with information
about my colleagues‟ activities”. While no survey
participant disagreed with either of the statements the
distribution of positive answers was different: 69%
strongly agree in the information awareness of
colleagues, while only 51% give this rating to the
statement on important information for one‟s direct
work (see Figure 4). This finding suggests that Arinia
mainly supports a general information awareness rather
than specific information delivery.
A corresponding issue is the decreased need for
meetings. One interview participant stated that
meetings are only scheduled if there is something to
discuss which is too lengthy to write about in Arinia or
too vague to have a structured online debate (“We only
need meetings when we have more to say as one can
write down”). Other interviews and the survey results
supported this finding. It was also stated that if
meetings were scheduled the results and discussion
protocol would consequently be posted into Arinia to
contribute to its knowledge base.

4.4. Perceived disadvantages: data protection
and a loss of human interaction

To further learn from the Arinia case and to assist
in building successful microblogging applications in
the future we considered that capturing perceived
disadvantages would be an important source of
information. Our interviews suggested three classes of
problems with the software: personal, cultural and tool-
related.
Personal reasons cited against Arinia were
manifold. We questioned respondents who clearly were
fans of direct face-to-face communication. They used
Arinia as a reader but did not accept it as their main
medium for communication. For example, one
individual stated that it would cost too much time to
write a posting and the „human element‟ would be lost.

Figure 4. Arinia provides information about
colleagues.

However, this perceived disadvantage seems to affect
not only Arinia but the whole class of computer-
mediated communication tools.
Further, Arinia seems to require improved skills for
media usage. As with today‟s microblogging
applications there are new postings appearing at
virtually anytime. Some participants told us that they
restrict themselves not to look at new postings too
often. Others conceded that they might be distracted by
curiosity. The survey data supports this wide spectrum
of media usage skills. The ratings for our statement
“Arinia encourages me to deal with things which do
not belong to my own responsibilities” are rather
diverse with 60% of respondents disagreeing, 23%
agreeing and 18% being neutral. There are different
ways within Arinia in which to highlight new postings.
Several participants told us that they deliberately
disabled the option which signals new postings (with a
blinking icon in the status bar) to avoid distraction.
The second class of perceived disadvantages is
cultural. The company has an open and informal
culture. Most interview participants stated that it is the
same in Arinia and that style and formal aspects are not
overly important. However, there were also opposite
opinions and the survey underpins these heterogeneous
perceptions. The statements “I read and correct a
posting carefully before I send it” and “A posting
should be well formulated (no keypoints)” had
disagreement from 31% and 42% of respondents and
agreement from 43% and 28% of respondents
respectively (with 26% and 20% neutral). This shows
that the perceived rules of Arinia are very different.
Further evidence for this includes the responses from
participants who partly complained about other users
that tended to be too informal in their communication
and not sufficiently work-focused.
A more serious problem than different opinions on
the appropriate style of communication was the matter
of work observation via Arinia. Naturally, one‟s
activities can be tracked if he or she writes them in a
microblogging-like tool. Although no-one stated it
clearly and overtly, in several interviews we „read
between the lines‟ to interpret this issue might affect
people‟s contribution to Arinia. One person said “what
I tell Arinia I tell the company” and therefore one
would have to think carefully before posting
information. To further examine this issue we asked for
ratings of the statement “I see Arinia as observation of
my work” in the survey. While the majority of
participants disagreed with this statement (47%
strongly disagree and 38% disagree), some 22% were
neutral and one participant strongly agreed. At first
glance these numbers appear to suggest that there are
few problems with fears of „surveillance‟. However, as
discussed before, the company is small and people,
including the executive team, work very closely
together. A proportion of one quarter of respondents
who exhibit uncertainty over observation fears in this
context signals that there could be a serious problem
when translating to larger and more hierarchical
organizations. However, this assertion is hypothetical
and further detailed research is needed to draw the
right conclusions on this point.
Finally, we found a number of perceived tool-
related shortcomings. These problems included
usability issues (e.g. font size and the „old-fashioned‟
interface) and functional shortcomings (e.g. a feature
request for calendar functionality). The biggest
complaint related to the search functionality. Many
users search for older postings (86% of the survey
participants). Several interview participants stated that
the keyword search was too weak to efficiently find
information. They often use filtering for a specific
pinboard and for a certain time period. This requires
that the user already knows the information and only
has to recover it. Arinia‟s public posting base contains
over 100,000 items today. With every item being
potentially worthy it can be seen as major challenge to
leverage appropriate filtering mechanisms.
Related to this issue is the problem of personal
names in the software. Arinia does not understand the
@<username> syntax of recent microblogging
software. In Arinia, users simply write the real-world
name if they want to address somebody (i.e. „Peter
could you please…‟). The result is that users have to
scan postings for their name when there might be a
new task or question for them. This method leads to the
probability of errors and furthermore surfaces issues
regarding whether users concentrate on their name or
on interesting key words and facts.

5. Discussion and conclusions

In this paper we have presented the case of Arinia,
a custom-made piece of software, dating from 1998,
with strong similarities to today‟s microblogging
applications. We have provided context to the case and
have discussed usage behavior, perceived advantages
and perceived disadvantages.
During the discussion of usage behavior we
developed the concept of the „information food chain‟.
This concept describes the strong differences in the
usage frequency of different units.
Arinia is a well established tool for sharing micro-
level information. The tool was designed
independently from today‟s microblogging approach.
However, it is very similar to these tools. This implies
that the shared functionality of Arinia and microblogs
in general are a „best practice‟ for sharing micro-level
information. From a microblogging point of view, the

differences between the two approaches are a very
interesting source of information. As Arinia has proven
its usefulness over many years of usage it is a topic for
further research to understand and explain the different
solutions to the same problem in order to get insights
for microblogging applications. On the other hand, new
functionalities from microblogging could enrich
Arinia.
The most obvious differences are the multi-
microblog approach and the missing character limit.
Our interviews showed that Arinia‟s users leveraged
the multiple pinboards as thematic orientation both for
contributing and consuming information. Such an
orientation is missing in microblogging applications.
From a web 2.0 point of view the multiple pinboards
could be interpreted as a forced tag for every posting.
In using a pinboard one enriches a posting with
contextual information and therefore with a tag. The
approach seems elegant as it also solves the task of
rights management; Arinia uses the forced context as
reference for rights settings.
Furthermore, the lack of a character limit in Arinia
provides implications for the discussion regarding
whether the character limit seen in Twitter (140
characters) is necessary for microblogging. Arinia
works without such a limit and postings are
nevertheless short.
The advantage of „the missing engaged tone‟,
discussed above, suggests a link to task closure theory
[16]. This theory explains communication behavior via
a medium‟s ability to close communication tasks. A
possible reason for the success of microblogging could
therefore be its good ability to close tasks. Further
research is needed to test this hypothesis.
A common future task of Arinia and microblogging
in general is discovery of information within the
created information silo. The example of Arinia shows
how big these silos can get and our research shows that
single search functionality is not enough for finding the
„needle in the haystack‟.
Arinia is the main communication platform of the
observed company and in the words of one respondent
the software “is the best tool for communication”.
While it also provides information for one‟s direct
work it was an interesting finding that it is even more
popular in creating awareness about the colleagues‟
activities. Our results regarding the problems of Arinia
showed that shortcomings of the tool itself play a
minor role. The main issues are personal attitudes and
cultural problems. The latter could be a serious
problem in organizations with a higher degree of
organization and formalization than in the company
studied here.
In conclusion, the case examined here underpins
the current hype of microblogging and its adoption
within the enterprise. It suggests that the approach of
shared micro-level information can be gainfully used in
professional contexts.

6. Acknowledgements

We want to thank all the employees at Megware,
and especially our interview partners for their
cooperation.

7. References

[1] Y. Assogba and J. Donath, “Mycrocosm: Visual
Microblogging,”, Proceedings of the Forty-Second Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42),
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