For years I've been saying that the key to adoption of collaboration software is "purpose". Without a real business reason to use a tool, it will just by another thing employees have to worry about. But if a tool is a seamless and natural part of a process, then organizations won't worry about measuring adoption, as everyone (invovled in that process) will be using the tool to do their jobs.
Several enterprise software vendors have latched onto the concept of "purpose" and have developed their collaboration platforms to integrate into the way people work. One such vendor is Collaborne, who recently introduced a feature they are refering to as "Call-To-Action". Instead of just providing the standard "Comment" and "Like" action on posts, Collaborne enables customers to customize the way people interact with posts using a structured reply form.
In the example below you can see a new record has been created for a job opening in SAP and that record has been posted into the activity stream (newsfeed) in Collaborne. Instead of standard text box for generic replies, there is a button called "Endorse a candidate". Clicking the button opens a form where people provide a link to a candidate and recomendations on why they suggest them.
While this may seem like a subtle difference, I think the impact can be signifigant. The ability to openly collaborate (be "social") but at the same time have a level of structure to the content is a powerful mix that I'd like to see more of from enterprise software vendors.
