Organisations are investing heavily in various social media
applications. Several case studies show that such undertakings may
be promising at first glance, but often amount to little. More attention
has to be paid to the factors that influence the business value of a
social media application. The paper proposes a framework which
argues that the business value of a social media activity depends on
having a correctly identified purpose of its implementation (scope
and targeted benefits), on the technological solution and also on user
involvement (user groups, users’ motivation and skills). The framework
is evaluated with a longitudinal case study of a wiki in a software
development company where an assessment of the business value
of the wiki at two different points in time was made. The case study
shows how the interplay of components led to failure at one time
point and success at the other