Is SharePoint Social Dead?

Yep.

Just like everything else at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2014 (SPC14), SharePoint Social is being pushed into Heaven or Hell depending on your point of view. In fact it’s being pushed so hard it got pushed right out SharePoint and into Yammer and new apps.

Basically we are talking about no updates or enhancements to on-premises SharePoint Social.

According to Jared Spataro, the General Manager of Enterprise Social at Microsoft, “… SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1), …makes it easy to connect an on-premises SharePoint deployment with an in-the-cloud Yammer network.” (Work like a network! Enterprise social and the future of work blog post)

DON’T PANIC!

Take a look at some of the new apps that make this loss more palatable:

• Office Graph – Not just an org chart. Office Graph shows how you are working with people in the organization. Meetings you’ve both attended, documents you’ve worked on together and discussions you’ve shared are all incorporated into the relationship model. Office Graph serves up your connections instead of you having to search for your connections.
• Oslo (codename) – I hate to say it, but it makes me think of Pinterest for Business. With so much information out there users are depending on images, context and search to find what they need to get the job done. Oslo takes care of the search and presents the information in a graphical format. Think of it as dynamic personal navigation.
• Yammer Group Experience – You’ll need O365 for this one. When you create a group anywhere in O365 you will get a group inbox, discussion, Outlook web apps calendar and a SharePoint document library. That’s a lot of Office Apps seamlessly integrated to get the job done.

What does this mean for you?

1. Start considering a hybrid solution. Remember your organization’s Yammer environment can be locked down as tight as you’d like, but it’s still in the Cloud.
2. If you started using SharePoint Social features, stick with what you’ve got, but start planning for a change.
3. Don’t panic. SharePoint Social isn’t going away…at least not today.