VentureWire featured an article in its August 28 newsletter on the migration of social networking, long-dominated by teens and young adults, into the professional and business worlds. Written by Jessica E. Vascellaro, the article suggests that social networking has been slow to catch on in business settings due to security, disclosure, and lack of perceived benefits. "Professionals are fairly protective about their social networks which they spend their whole lives to build," says Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
But as tools improve, and benefits become more obvious, that may all change.
Here are 5 take-aways:
1. Social networking is just one of many consumer technologies, including blogs, wikis and virtual worlds, to cross over into the corporate world. It is happening as social networking is moving more into the mainstream. Leading consumer social-networking sites attracted more than 110 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in July, up more than 40% from the previous July, according to comScore Inc.Of course, with few exceptions, none of the business-oriented social networking sites appears to be making money. As they begin to face funding realities, and introduce more aggressive fee structures, it will be interesting to watch how many survive.
2. Millions of professionals already turn to broad-based networking sites like LinkedIn to swap job details and contact information, often for recruiting purposes. Business executives also have turned to online forums, email lists and message boards to sound off on information related to their industries. Now, online services are trying to promote a more personal type of business networking. Unlike relatively simple message boards that are open to all, these new sites -- including Sermo.com for doctors and INmobile.org for the wireless industry -- have features such as profile pages showing professional credentials; personal blogs that function like a kind of online diary; links to "friends" online; electronic invitations to real or online events; and instant-messaging.
3. Many of the new services are free to members. Revenue comes from advertising or charging outside businesses access to data and member discussions.
4. Some of the new sites simply charge a membership fee. This fall, for example, Reuters Group PLC is planning to launch a new social-networking service, tentatively named "Reuters Space," for fund managers, traders and analysts. For a fee, which hasn't yet been set, they will be able to log on to create profiles with industry-relevant information like their "asset class" and "instruments," check financial news feeds and ruminate about the industry on personal blogs.
5. Online networking services are trying to broaden their appeal with new ways of making sure their members are who they say they are. For example, Sermo authenticates each of its members by checking their credentials against several of the 10,000 databases they have access to. The service also requires users to answer three verifiable personal questions, ranging from their phone number to where they got their medical degrees before they can sign up.
Or how many social networking sites one executive ultimately decides he needs to belong to.
A guess: Less than three. The question: Even one?
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