Online Collaborative Tools: So many choices . . .

Playing with this week’s online collaboration tools was a bit overwhelming for me.  Unlike past weeks, I found that I had never heard of most of these, let alone actually used any of them other than Google Docs, Meebo, and Skype.  And I’ve only used these three a combined handful of times beginning last semester during my library internship.  I used Google Docs and Skype to collaborate briefly with two other SLIS student interns and Meebo to ask a digital reference question of a librarian.  So I have not had much experience using any of these tools for extended collaboration purposes.

One of my questions when contemplating using any new kind of social software is how do you know which one is best to try and use?  In one of this week’s readings, Dembo comments that “the problem with the proliferation of Web2.0 tools and free resources [is that it] makes it too easy to just jump in without thinking ahead.”  Most of these tools seem pretty cool upon first review, but how do I know which ones will fit my needs and my organization’s needs the best?  In another reading, Suarez (borrowing from McDonnell) lists as one of the questions to ask before full adoption of a wiki, “Is a wiki the best technology for what I am seeking to accomplish?”  This question could easily be changed to reflect any of these collaborative tools, e.g., Is Google Docs the best technology to use for document collaboration or would TextFlow be a better option?  Also what if I begin using one of these tools and then it goes away?  For instance, out of this week’s links, I was disappointed to find that there were a number of them that no longer work (Present.io, drop.io) or in which the software’s fate is questionable (Etherpad, DimDim, Google Wave).

Suarez suggests that you may not need to dump what you’ve been using if it’s been working, but that perhaps a new collaborative tool will enhance what you’ve been using which might make it worth a try.  He states that “social software needs to meet a set of requirements, of needs.”  Carpenter makes a similar argument:  “the goal is for a use case that’s “real”, not some made-up activity for the sake of testing the software.”  Having not had much experience with any of these collaborative tools, I definitely feel lured in by their seemingly cool features.  At the same time I agree that it’s very important to look at what’s already working for your organization, really think about what the organization’s needs and goals are, and make sure there’s a need that’s not already being met with existing software before investing too much time and effort trying out the latest tool that may be gone sooner than you think.