Web Workplace – a new word for intranet?

Firstly let me say this whole discussion must be seen in the light it is being undertaken, we’re talking about language English to be exact and all the nuances and connotations that words in that language come with.
That said
Up until this point, and for many organisations still, intranets are a thing that provides content, somewhere to go and get other things to do stuff with.
A lot like a library is a thing and a place you go to get other things to do stuff with.
Increasingly intranets are less and less like traditional libraries.
Increasingly they are places to go and get other things AND also places to do stuff with those things.
I am no linguist but it seems that our essential problem is that intranets have changed from nouns into verbs. Like Google changed from a noun ‘I went to google’ into a verb ‘have you googled it’
So in my mind we’re looking for a term that can fit both bills, and which probably doesn’t exist yet, or a word that we can co-opt that is so old or obscure it has connotations to only a few people.
Hence my view that the term should be a single word.
Business value is one of the key things we’re trying to convey so why don’t we work on looking at some root words that convey the following
Business and business value
Connections (as this is where a large part of the value can be found)
I hope this helps.
DorjeM

The best I have heard yet is Social Workplace. It encapsulates the workside of the Intranet with the fun side.
This can be supplemented with Social Marketplace, which is the external facing world. Both require different approaches and can supplement one another, so the terms work well.
I believe I read those terms in a Whitepaper by OpenText.
Cheers,
Sean
@seanrnicholson

I like to talk to clients about their ‘intranet ecosystem’ – being a geek who understands that the term was originally used to describe a ‘private network using Internet protocols and technologies’ I think the word works just fine – but having said that too many clients appear to think the intranet is just the CMS that Comm’s use to publish news, not all the other information systems and applications that provide ‘web browser’ based interfaces. How about the Workplace Web instead of Web Workplace… ????

I agree with lots of the comments above! I’d like to add 2 points to this discussion which I started when I suggested that “web workplace” could be a good term to replace “intranet”.
1. The word “intranet” is not as clear as some think.
In the last 3 years as I have been presenting findings from the Global Intranet Strategies Survey in meetings and conferences in different parts of the world and in different companies, I have yet to meet a group of people who agree on what the word intranet means. This has also been my experience when I work with my clients. Last week I ran 2 workshops for 2 different clients. In both cases, people put quite different meanings behind the word.
My experience has been that many people simply assume that others understand the word as they do. Therefore, using a new word is not necessarily moving away from a commonly understood term.
2. I believe one of the problems is that the word intranet is a technical word rather than a business or user-oriented word.
This is illustrated by the way some people use “extranet” meaning the “intranet” can be accessed over the “internet”. Others use “extranet” to mean a closed space for groups such as clients or suppliers who work with a company but cannot access the “intranet”. The word “intranet” is grounded in a technical explanation in these examples. This may be one of the reasons why the word intranet does not trigger a lot of interest in the minds of senior executives in many organizations. They assume it’s a technical thing that IT will take care of.

I like the term “web workplace”. But I guess that begs the question, what is the definition of a “web workplace”? How would it be different to say a portal or an intranet.

I like the term enterprise portal but I think that it is a little bit outdated.

I think the name should reflect that the intranet is becoming a web gateway to all the enterprise information as well as applications. It should also outline that it is becoming more and more customized to the employee role. Finally, it should reflect the increasing social&collaborative aspect. Based on that I would suggest names like:

*My Enterprise (enterprise could be replace by the real name of the enterprise)
*My Enterprise gateway
*My Enterprise Online
*My Web workplace
*Enterprise online network