Is social networking just getting warmed up?

Pretty much every seasoned web user has an account with at least one of the popular social networks, like MySpace, Facebook, Hi5 and LinkedIn.

There are countless more such networks and the trend seems to be reaching every niche one can possibly imagine.

It’s a good thing because the more people work together, the faster we can achieve great things but then again, not all social networks vye to reinvent a better world as most of them are just endless streams of largely useless chatter where people interact without actually attempting to truly connect.

Not all communications have to be meaningful to be interesting for those engaging in it but it can seem like a lot of lost energy to fuel such large networks that basically amount to nothing. But that’s irrelevant, in a way, because millions of people still stampede towards these “rate me if you like me” type of social networks so in itself, there has to be a genuine need underneath all that digital noise.

So people, from the world over, are assisting to the rise of the social networks.

In and of itself, that’s big but is this a prelude to something even bigger or is social networking as we know it as good as it’s going to get?

That’s an excellent question and while nobody can say for sure, the featureset of a typical social network pretty much engulfs everything else with Twitter-like streams, blogs, forums, friend rings and chats, all packed into a single web destination which feels coherent to the user. So, featurewise, social networks pack quite a punch. Not all the features are as developed as “single application scripts” but to the user, that seems to matter very little as all they see is the feature itself and not the technology supporting it.

Social networking has everything to do with the cloud where the size and speed of hosting appears to be somewhat infinite, from a user’s standpoint. It’s probably the web 2.0 most compelling spinoff since a social network is often the place where people finally settle after looking at all sorts of other web services.

And since online social networking is generally free, millions of people just open up an account figuring it’s a good deal. Over time, some build up very rich offerings in their “social realm” and others never return after signing-up. The social networks nevertheless connect hundreds of millions of people daily for business and pleasure.

Among the niche-type social networks to watch out for, the following cities now have their own job-centric social networks: Miami, Daytona Beach, Tampa Bay, Detroit, Toronto and Montreal (with more cities to come). It’s an excellent idea as employers and workers are always looking for new ways to connect, locally.

As you can see, social networks will continue to evolve and amaze those who watch them thrive in all sorts of directions, with more power, more storage and more features than ever before.

For all these reasons and many more, it may seem like social networks have reached a plateau but in reality, they may just be warming up for a highly networked future.

Tags: social networks, social networking, online networks, people, connect, connections, online friends, myspace, facebook, hi5, linkedin, networked, jobs, business, niche networks, members, free

What social networking vendors offer, for businesses…

The social networking scene has taken the web by storm as Blogger, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace and countless others expand peoples’ reach way beyond their physical community to realms that span across cyberspace.

It so easy.

People create a profile and voilà !

They’re set to share content, ideas and opinions.

Social networking, especially for those who know their way around, is insanely cool. It’s no surprise that so many organizations are looking to setup their own, internally. Once a business social network is up and running, if it’s done right, employees and managers can connect among themselves with ease.

One theory, with regards to business social networks, is that good ideas get validated and bad ideas get discarded more quickly, which leads to faster product development — but it’s just a theory.

In general, companies will benefit, in various ways, from the content that’s being created, shared, added upon and archived for later use.

Any company can make social networking yield benefits but like most new things, it would be foolish to attempt to qualify its financial bottomline usefulness with hard metrics. For the time being, it’s more a matter of getting in early than trying to catch up, later on.

So assuming you’re ready to launch your internal social network, which solution should you choose? Well, that’s for the IT guys to decide but to get the ball rolling, consider the following vendors…

• Drupal
  • Open source.
  • Great at community-driven sites.
  • Blogs and profiles.
• IBM Lotus Connections
  • Paid software.
  • Helps you execute tasks more quickly by using dynamic networks of coworkers, partners and customers
  • Blogs, profiles, social bookmarks, communities and more.
• Jive Software
  • Licensed software or hosted SaaS.
  • Integrates the “enterprise 2.0″ capabilities of collaboration software, community software and social networking software.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, social bookmarks, tags, discussions and more.
• MS-SharePoint
  • Paid server software, MS SaaS or hosted by 3rd parties.
  • In its own words: connecting people, process and information.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles and communities.
• NewsGator
  • Paid software. Extends MS-SharePoint.
  • Empower employees, customers and partners to collaborate, communicate, and innovate in order to create business value through social computing.
  • SharePoint add-ons for tags, tag clouds, expert search, discussions and more.
• Scuttle
  • Open source.
  • Light on the more advanced features but does social bookmarking like it should.
  • Social bookmarking.
• Socialtext
  • Paid hosted service or on-location server appliance.
  • Used for all employees to get a collective view of what’s going on and share content.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, social bookmarks and microblogging.
• Telligent
  • Lease the software or buy perpetual licenses.
  • Designed for high-volume communities where performance and up-time are critical.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, groups and communities, social analytics and more.

And as you continue searching for vendors, expect to find lots of other worthwhile finds. Keep in mind that the big software firms are currently being swarmed by waves of smaller firms offering solid codesets and eye-pleasing visuals so expect the heated competition to go on, for a while.

In case you were just thinking about this…

Yes, open source has an advantage over most paid and hosted solutions: it’s free!

It’s also instantly available through a simple download and there’s no licensing fee, whatsoever. If you can make up for a little less “business-class support”, open source scripts will likely end up being your first and all-time best choice. Keep in mind open source projects evolve all the time and all those upcoming updates will also be… free. Which is nice.

And don’t forget that open source projects usually come with mountains of useful plug-ins which add bleeding edge features to your core script. Plus the fact you can dive right into your code and tweak just about anything you want. No encryption here.

But perhaps open source is not your thing.

If that’s your case, paid scripts (or software) or hosted solutions is where you’ll most likely end up as very few organizations develop their own social networking engine from scratch.

With such solutions, the deeper your pockets, the more features you’ll get.

And you’re not too picky, customizationwise, you’ll be up and running rather quickly. Software as a service (or “Saas”) is where many mid-sized companies like to do business because everything’s hosted externally. There can be some cost saving at first but as the content volume grows, it can inflate the rent to the point where it’s not that much of a deal anymore so watch out for that. Do your mathematical projections before you sign-up.

Paid software is generally hosted in-house and it’s generally yours for life but remember that the upgrades might cost you a lot of dough, over and above all the other technical maintenance cost. Again, do your mathematical projections before rearranging your server room to accomodate a business social networking software solution.

If you still feel anxious about deploying a social network in your enterprise, seek help from the vendors themselves or from local IT firms which specialize in web 2.0 stuff.

All in all, if your organization is still unsure about wether it’s worth it to have an internal social network, consider that employees will get access to blogs, wikis and tools that let them communicate, collaborate and share information.

The real bottom-line question might be, how much is it worth, to your enterprise, to have its employees using applications it controls and manages? Once that question is answered, everything else aligns itself accordingly.

Tags: social networking, social networks, internal networks, company social network, enterprise, business, social networking vendors, ibm, lotus, jive, sharepoint, saas, hosted solutions, paid software, .net, microsoft, blogs, wikis, search, information, connect, share, content, server

Business social networking done right

There’s a lot of talk about the value of adding social networking to the communications strategy, in countless organizations who see the benefits but fear the downsides.

While there’s little doubt getting employees communicating with each other will help bring teamwork to a whole new level, allowing everybody the opportunity to contribute the organization’s success through blogs, wikis and such might generate some initial confusion.

The following five (5) best practices tips will help you ensure your business social networking project gets done right.

1. Test the waters
   • People in the business world are asking themselves why they can’t have their very own Blogger, Wikipedia and Facebook, internally.
   • If a company doesn’t take it upon itself to offer such tools, employees will find a way to do it themselves, through open source solutions or otherwise.
   • Companies can try social networking with a low cost (or no cost) pilot, namely using open source scripts which are widely available. Hosted applications can also help.
2. Set modest expectations
   • To get a project off the ground, don’t try to oversell it. Don’t promise executives that enterprise social networking will unleash, ignite or synergize anything.
   • Pitch the project as a pilot. That’s very important. Insist on the option to walk away after a few quarters if it doesn’t work as expected.
   • Describe one or two business improvements you think are achievable.
   • Make sure to set reasonable goals in regards to user adoption and increase your odds for success by seeding an initial deployment among the teams who appear most eager to use these tools.
   • Try to find a way to measure business value.
   • Hard numbers might not be expected from a pilot -but- management will want to know the payback, down the line.
3. Don’t let fear stangle growth
   • Some businesses are wary about letting their employees voice out, out of fear that they’ll say improper things. There’s also a fear that the “social” part will spin out of control.
   • Even if you’re tempted to vigorously police employee-generaed content, resist that urge! It would have a chilling effect on participation and could tank the entire project.
   • First and foremost, it’s a human thing. Employees need time to grow comfortable with speaking up, sharing ideas and participating in company-wide conversations.
   • A social networking project will likely wither before it even has a chance of growing if people fear the throught police (don’t make “1984″, all over again).
4. Resist exclusivity
   • Gated communities are what they are, gated. Don’t let that happen within your social network. That approach defeats the purpose of social networking.
   • It’s a natural reflex to want all the named groups to be locked down but that will kill teamwork, team spirit and the social aspect of it all.
   • Exposing discussions to a broader community has —a lot— of value. Never underestimate this.
5. Don’t forget about search
   • Search underpins the value of social networking platforms. Poor searching (or indexing) tools make social networking less useful.
   • As you look for social networking solutions, ask the vendors about their search capabilities. At first, it’s not very important but as content builds up, it becomes essential.
   • Make sure the search feature allows for user-generated feedback such as tags and content-rating systems (it sometimes comes through the addition of plug-ins, and thats ok).
   • A good search feature helps prevent your social networking platform from becoming another silo, so if possible, consider federated search. As such, your internal search engine should be able to index content in other systems, query 3rd party search engines and pull results from other information repositories.

Regarding search, you could also allow for external engines to query your internal indexes and content but given that we’re dealing with business social networks, that might only be a good idea for a few companies.

Business social networks are all about offering the state of the art in online networking inside the company so employees don’t have to venture outside for such features as blogging and wikis.

Furthermore, many companies are still clueless on how to transfer knowledge between more experienced workers and those who will (some day) replace them. Social networks can help with this by creating easily accessible archives of work-related content which, in time, might prove quite valuable.

Many businesses also use social networking for recruitment purposes. Internal promotion can be simplified and external recruitment of fresh talent can surely benefit from internal referrals. Human resources people usually have good words for internal social networks because, among other things, it empowers them with a powerful communications tool that all employees are likely to use.

It’s pretty clear that your own deployment will be customized to fit your own needs but overall, setting up a business social network will never let management indifferent.

So, go ahead and fire up your own enterprise social network. You’ll quickly see just how wise “your crowd” really is.

Tags: business social networking, social networks, socially, employees, employers, companies, enterprises, social nets, blogger, facebook, linkedin, twitter, wikipedia, blogs, wikis, archives, information archives, user adoption, networking, community, search engine

How to deal with social networks at the office

Given the abundance of social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and Ning, a growing crowd of companies have adopted “reasonable internet use” policies.

Such policies generally award personal time to surf the web, along with the strickly professional tasks. This clears the air about the occasional use of information systems use for stuff which is important to the employee while not being directly linked to his work directives, per se.

Within this mix of “personal vs business” use of the internet, at the office, lies the social networking grey zone, of sorts.

While networking with mostly personal contacts may not directly ring in new sales or realize specific business objectives, it remains, nonetheless, another path towards business growth, if used strategically. This aspect should never be underplayed by managers as it’s a reflection of a rising trend to look online for counsel, help and information on just about all matters.

For instance, if a machining shop’s employees are offered financial incentives to help find qualified new employees for the company, the recruitment process’ cost can be slashed from thousands to mere hundreds of dollars, not to mention the much shorter delays before qualified profiles arrive on the HR manager’s desk.

Another example. Company image. Having employees provide free help (within reasonable limits) to a highly visible cause (or Facebook group) will likely establish the brand in a new light for those who find it there. Think of all those Facebook groups with millions of active members where a company employee could provide a much needed “answer” accompanied with a free consultation offer for all those who require it — the outcome can be downright spectacular… and wildly lucrative.

Yet another scenario would be one where an employee finds a stream of information of low values to just about everybody else but inversely, of very high value to him because it helps within his line of work. For example, if a company sells winter shelters, it would be awesome to have live temperature feeds alongside historical temperatures for the markets they serve. That way, the sales periods (and marketing campaigns) can be precisely aligned with “on the ground” needs, as they arise (or are about to).

We could go on for quite a while regarding the many ways in which social networking activities can provide added value to just about any company but as in anything, employees need to find a viable balance between their tasks, while making sure they keep up with their work responsibilities.

From the bosses’ perspective, if someone is doing what’s expected and doing it reasonably well, there’s no basis for further investigation or complaint.

Pointing out the obvious, making sure people aren’t engaging in gross negligence or addictive, risky and unethical behavior in using social networks —or any other popular web site or service— is probably the bosses’ most important task because that’s where “the problems” are likely to arise from.

Terrorizing all employees with some drastic (lawyer formulated) net use policy is supremely counter-productive and might end up costing the company dearly in lower employee morale, abysmal productivity and a sense of general resentment against such a radical cutoff with the way business is carried about, elsewhere.

As social networks grow up to become all sorts of things to all sorts of people, including business-minded people, companies where acceptance, within a “reasonable use” comfort zone, trumps over internet monitoring paranoia (by the bosses) are likely to reap substantial benefits from their progressive stance on the web’s latest and greatest offerings.

Tags: social networks, social networking, working, at the office, networking with people, meeting, e-meeting, meeting up with new people, business leads, business contacts, companies, internet monitoring, business opportunities, reasonable internet use, lawyers, policies, net usage policy, popular web sites

Are social networks useful?

At a time when everybody can easily set up a full blown blog (think WordPress), including revenue generating advertising, why would so many people be wasting their time posting quality content in (other people’s) social networks?

If you look at the member count at MySpace, Gather, Orkut, Facebook and Hi5, to name only those, it’s clear that being there has a lot to do with connecting family, friends and co-workers. While a minority of members actually take the time to post large amounts of content (of varying usefulness), most people just click around rather aimlessly — akin to wasting time in the local mall, on a rainy day.

So it seems that while a proverbial handful of people are there to obtain some form of visibility for their content, the bulk of these social network members are pretty clueless about “what else” they could be doing, other than surfing away their free time.

In today’s most popular networks, there’s a lot to do such as dressing up the profile, posting articles, images, videos, comments (in response to other people’s articles, blog-style), adding up friends and joining groups. So why are people so uninterested by all these features? It could be many things but it basically comes down to each member’s perception of the service. Said differently, to participate, the member has to find that posting content in a social network is useful… for him or her!

Social networks are allegedly bringing in large amounts of advertising money (pay-per-click or otherwise) for their owners but the members are always treated as “those who freely provide the content” so that pretty much insures that they’ll never get rich “networking” in other people’s (rather tightly controlled) web properties.

Maybe some musical artists on MySpace Music will convince a few more fans to listen to their music along the way but for most artists, it’s not the fastest route to financial independance. Similarly, some web marketers have tried peddling all sorts of things to all sorts of crowds, namely through groups, although eventually, they’re caught “abusing” the social network and either get their account downgraded or banned.

So we’re down to seeing social networks as big (and sometimes huge), ongoing, garden cocktail parties where everyone’s basically free to join but more likely uninterested enough to eventually forget they even have a working membership. Social networks therefore try to muster members’ attention with special events, promotions and features. It seems to be having very uneven levels of success, depending on the perceived value for the user, if any.

The Frankenstein-like privacy policy nightmares related to these social networks will be the main theme for an upcoming article but suffice it to say that trusting these particular “third-party” web services with information you hold dear, like your entire identity, might turn out to be a very, very bad idea.

So should bloggers also have their “spin marketing” account in each of these social networks to generate theme-specific unique visits to their blogs? It depends. If no other alternative exists, social networks might be better than nothing but that’s about it. For instance, a blogger’s not likely to hit Google‘s top search spot because he cross-posted lead-generating content in his MySpace or Orkut account. It might help (over the very long run) but it’s not going to make a significant impact.

It’s a gradual process, really.

Most people get sucked into these networks to “become (online) friends” to their offline counterparts. Once in a while, they get a message from their friends, through the social network. At this point, most people wonder if the whole social networking thing is really worth it but deleting their account is made so ridiculously difficult (or tricky) that they just keep it as is until things hopefully become less entangled.

So even though social networks are said to be handling hundreds of millions of member profiles, one has to wonder if the members are really getting a valuable payoff, at their end of the deal. After all, (1) they’re actively or passively censored, (2) they can’t (legally) make any money with (pay-per-click) advertising, (3) they instantly lose full property of their content the moment they post it and (4) in the case their profile is abused, they’re legally bound by contract to fully indemnify the social network operator — even if those operators happen to be the culprits!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg because in most networks, members have very little control over what other members say about them and that could lead down a very slippery slope, online and off.

So at this point, most members might be scratching their heads as to why they’re sticking with these rather insidious networking platforms anyway.

If you’re one of these members, you’re not alone since a lot of people are now backing away from freely giving away their personal information and going back to creating their very own blog in why they control all aspects of the content while remaining the owners of what they create… and getting a bit richer (with PPC ads), in the process.

While most people will continue to use one form or another of social networks, chances are that until the operators come clean, from legal and ethical standpoints, more and more people will see more use in staying away from these networks than joining them.

After all, giving away -everything- you think up can’t be that useful for you although, in the global scheme of things, it’ll make total strangers (the social network owners) that much richer!

Tags: social networks, usefulness, networking, people, myspace, gather, orkut, facebook, hi5, legal, ethical

Locked down in social networks

While joining an online social network may be easy, deleting your (potentially embarrassing) account from it may -never- be possible.

If you sign-up with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or almost any other flavor of such “networking” services, you better kiss your privacy goodbye.

From the moment you start posting content, remember that everything you post is now owned by another entity and whatever control you have over your “seemingly private data” is merely a permission that’s temporarily “granted” to you.

While social networks might have had lofty ideals, their current obsession with total ownership of all the content floating within their network coupled with twisted deletion procedures go to paint a much murkier picture of their “service” where, among other things, YOUR personal information is a commodity sold and resold forever, however desperate you may be to have that data permanently deleted.

Nowadays, more and more social networking victims are exiting the scene entirely because they’ve just discovered how these outfits operate. When the smoke clears, members trying to delete their account almost always end up losing a mix of (1) time, (2) money and (3) peace of mind.

Savvy web surfers have steered clear of social networks from the moment they took about 30 minutes of their time to read their “privacy policy” along with equally frightening their “terms of use”. In a nutshell, they own anything you do on their network, wether its usage pattern or actual postings… forever!

If you’re looking to exit any of these mostly useless, junk filled, spam circulating social networks, don’t settle for mere “deactivation” (like in the case of Facebook) because your data is kept fully intact, until you return.

Don’t hesitate to contact consumer defense groups during your account deletion process because even though you can beg the member service clerk all you want (usually without success), you’ll likely need the added muscle to be sure your data is -really- deleted, forever.

Until this privacy protection quagmire is resolved, to the user’s advantage, joining social networks will continue to be very risky business that could cost you dearly.

Tags: social networks, facebook, myspace, bebo, account deletion, privacy, risk