Excuse me for the Romeo and Juliet reference, but I do think there might be an undercurrent of unbridled passion for any term we might offer up to describe the integration of social networking to any enterprise application. There is most certainly a divide (perhaps unconscious) between two camps of very ardent supporters of their preferred terminology and nomenclature. On one hand we have the Enterprise 2.0 or E2.0 enthusiasts. One the other we have the CRM2.0/Social CRM/SCRM camp, arguably a sibling of the former or a distant cousin perhaps – related for sure but in some people’s view not as worldly or well rounded. The E2.0 camp might say “we are a platform, we have broad applicability and can enable a number of critical applications." The SCRM camp might say, “we solve a specific business problem and help companies engage customers in a more productive way which is THE most critical application of all.”

I have been tracking with great interest the Twitter threads coming out of the E2.0 conference this week in Boston, with posts by folks such as Rachel Happe, Dion Hinchcliffe, Gil Yehuda, Sameer Patel and others. I have been tracking the #SCRM thread for some time, where you will find Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Natalie Petouhoff and others. It has been fascinating to see how these two threads paralleled each other all week, with so much in common yet so very far apart. I even asked a simple question of each thread – “who on this thread is also tracking the other?" I got one response. The themes are so consistent: How do we drive adoption? Where is the ROI? This is not about data it’s about people. Here is another great case study. Interesting to witness for sure.

Paul Greenberg, penned a superb blog post today on his experience at the E2.0 conference. I think it’s fair to say Paul was more than a little excited about the conference, essentially calling it one of the most vital events for anyone interested in the social enterprise. Yet he also noticed the same divide and was a bit surprised that there was a dirth of content on SCRM. Curious given the strategic importance of customer oriented initiatives these days. Has this omission of SCRM from the E2.0 event dissuaded Paul from carrying the social enterprise flag?  Far from it. In his words as he looked forward to the Rockstars of Social CRM panel for which he was a speaker (more than 500 attendees expected at last count) – “Rock On, Social CRM."

Tony Nemelka has visited with folks in both the E2.0 and SCRM camps over the last several weeks. He too noticed the divide. After several exchanges on which terminology to use, his final comment was simply “neither." Neither really does much to help the ultimate consumer understand what we are all about in the end. Tony finds the term Social Business Applications inclusive of both camps and perhaps more appealing to customers who have been inundated with ___ 2.0 this and ___CRM that for so long they have become virtually meaningless. And Geoff Moore most certainly would agree we would all be better off if we would get together and collectively help companies understand what we offer and make all of this safe to embrace.