This weekend I noticed a tweet from the MDM tool vendor Orchestra Networks:
There is clearly something completely wrong with this tweet. Why on earth should a French company use an American date format?
Apart from that there is a very good point. Why should tool vendors work on solving imaginable future master data management issues as integrating social network profiles with traditional customer master data while there are plenty of issues that need a better solution today?
Personally I think social MDM is going to be huge. I had some of my first musings on the subject some years ago in the post Social Master Data Management. Probably we will start with some Lean Social MDM, and that is honestly also as far as I have explored this field until now.
What about you. Do you want social MDM?
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
I want it. But only after I get all these customers get on board with plain simple MDM first. I deal with so many of them on a day to day basis who probably will start thinking about social MDM (even lean MDM) and big data probably a decade from now.
Sorry, if this sounds like a rant. The reality is that there are tons of them who just are still in a stone age when it comes to data management.
As one of the vendors talking about social MDM, I think it’s important to gives vision to the market while also delivering pragmatic solutions for today. Social MDM is going to be big as enterprises, starting with Retail, look at opening up new routes to market through social networks. It makes sense that MDM is at the core since MDM enables you to understand the single view of a customer – and their relationships both within and beyond the enterprise.
So, I for one, like to hear of vendors with a vision for the future that shows where the industry is going. If you want to see the Informatica vision, then take a look at our CEO Sohaib Abbasi delivering the keynote at informatica world last week – social MDM is a big part of it! (www.informaticaworld.com).
Thanks Prash and Chris for commenting.
There is of course a difference about:
• What every single enterprise should do in MDM according to current maturity and way of doing business
• What a MDM tool vendor should explore according to market assessment, analyst input, current customer base and technology stack
Apologies about the date, we misinterpreted ISO 8601 😉
w/regards to social MDM, it may be interesting if you’re a consumer-focused (B2C) concern but for B2B? In addition to Chris’ example of tracking customer sales, social MDM could come in handy for segmentation after correcting for sampling bias. That said there a lot of unknowns in the regulatory realm. How will the revised EU Data Protection Directive will affect social networking, let alone use of social network data by 3rd parties? And will non-EU citizens begin to demand the same kinds of protections outlined in the directive? Is the US next? (You could argue that the USA FTC Do-Not-Track recommendations have antecedents in the EU ePrivacy Directive).
Some interesting conjecture and it is of course the role of a vendor to establish a vision in the market. But while “Social” may be good for marketing lines, I am with Prashant on the need for firms to get on board with some basic blocking and tackling with “plain simple MDM”.
Thanks a lot for joining the discussion here Conrad.
I agree. Privacy is a huge somewhat unknown factor in social MDM.
About B2C and B2B I have a feeling that B2B actually will bring the most business cases. That is based on the way I work myself and I know many other people doing B2B do. We use LinkedIn (Xing, Viadeo…) as an integrated part of reaching out to and learning about business partners. Twitter too – I think I found you there. Sooner or later that will be “systemized”.