Last night, I had dinner with a friend who told me that his MBA class had just had their 30th reunion and one of the topics they discussed was that they wanted to develop an online collaboration space where they could maintain their connections. He asked me whether I thought that social networking sites were “ready” for private online collaboration communities. “Do you mean Facebook for grown ups?” I asked. And he said yes, that’s exactly what they wanted.
Once again, I feel like someone at the Wall Street Journal must be tapping in to my personal experiences because a cover story in today’s Personal Journal talks about social networking sites for professionals, such as doctors and advertising executives. The article talks about the desire to connect with colleagues for advice and in the case of doctors, opinions or insights into treatment plans. It also offers some advice about how to make sure that you are not giving away too much proprietary or competitive information – how to “weed out impostors.” Weeding out impostors will still be an issue with my friend’s MBA alumn network, so being a little cautious about doing business with someone you meet immediately in a social networking site, even a private one, may not be a good idea. However, I happen to know that his particular school is thinking about sponsoring just such a site on their own, where the school can help validate the credentials of potential members, much like Sermo.com does for physicians.
Social networking has clearly come of age and the great thing is that it really appears to have hit the baby boomers and the current generation of college students at the same time. The difference for me is that while I am connected via social networking sites, I still use the telephone to connect with my colleagues and friends in real time. My kids, however, make most of their connections via their social networking sites, which means that when they have their 30th reunions from college and grad school, they will not have to ask about creating a networking site – they’ll already be on it all the time!
Hanley is an independent consultant and president of her own firm, Susan Hanley LLC, where she specializes in the design and development of portal solutions and knowledge management consulting.
She is co-author of Essential SharePoint 2007: Delivering High-Impact Collaboration. Read a free chapter of the book.
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Which social networking sites?
So, which sites do you use for business and what do you use them for?
Facebook can be used by
Facebook can be used by grown-ups too. It's free and has lots of features
Social Networking sites
I would call myself a passive user of Linked In and I've been pretty amazed at the connections that have resulted from people contacting me via that network. My favorite LInked In coincidence is that I was wracking my brain trying to remember the name of a colleague that I'd worked with two companies ago. Someone had asked me about her and I couldn't remember her name. It made me absolutely crazy to have this "senior moment." The very next day, I got an invitation from her to connect via Linked In! It was great because the person I was talking to wanted her e-mail addess and now I had it! My kids, of course, "live" in Facebook so I suspect that as they move into the workforce, that site will probably stick for their generation.