Harold Jarche wrote a great blog posting today called Social snake oil (I've re-used his graphic here too!).
To highlight some of his argument. Harold says that ..
"As soon as the software vendors and marketers get hold of a good idea, they pretty well destroy it"
and that "social learning is being picked up by software vendors and marketers as the next solution-in-a-box, when it’s more of an approach and a cultural mind-set".
Furthermore, that "perhaps PT Barnum was right and there is an innate desire to buy some magic potion to solve all our problems."
Harold mentioned me in his posting so I responded in a comment that I was also getting concerned because ...
"just as the word “e-learning” has been misused, the word “social learning” is also beginning to be abused. Articles or vendors that suggest that implementing social learning is simply about upgrading your LMS to a Social LMS or LMS 2.0 are completely missing the point."
These are only snippets from the posting and my comment, so do please read it all in full and join the discussion. In particular I'd be interested to hear if you think we can prevent "social learning" being hi-jacked in the same way as the term "e-learning" was, or if this really is inevitable?
Oh, and if you want to know what I think "social learning" is all about, you can read my article The State of Social Learning and Some Thoughts for the Future of Learning & Development.
