Social networking good for business?
Ed Gottsman at ZDnet writes:
The workplace won’t change because of Gen-Y’s values. It’ll change because of their tools. In particular, social networking tools. Now, if you’re like me you are sick unto death of hearing about MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn. But part of the reason they keep coming up is that they’re important.
There’s a bit too much exasperated-old-foginess coming out of this article, but Gottsman makes a good point here:
So one of the most important assets Gen-Y will bring to the workplace is its Facebook account: an enormous “rolodex” of acquaintances–probably larger, more varied and better maintained than those of top management. Enterprises will be well-advised to encourage cultivation of this contact list–in other words, to let their employees “play” on FaceBook–since this activity will serve as a source of new customers and recruits.
While I have mixed feelings on Facebook and its long term prospects (more on that later), there’s definitely something to the idea that Gen Y employees will bring social networking clout to businesses. Already businesses have seen the kind of success a timely link from digg, slashdot and BoingBoing can bring them. My own digg experience has shown that a front page appearance on a weekday during business hours can net a web site some 30,000 pageviews. Considering posting to digg costs $0, it’s hard to think of more effective advertising.
I do think this is an area where Gen Y will have to be smart, though. No matter how much the corporate landscape shifts, no one’s ever going to get hired because they have over 1,000 MySpace or Facebook friends. Especially if your social networking activities are limited to superpokes and Scrabulous. On the other hand, if someone happens to have regular IM or twitter contact with Jason Kottke, waxy or the gang at 37 signals, that’s an immediately valuable thing for business. That’s an employee who has the connections to get you major exposure across the web.
This shouldn’t just be limited to so-called ‘web’ companies, either. This is something that all businesses would do well to keep in mind, especially as more people — and not just the sketchy ‘SEO’ market lurking about these days — come into business with extensive social networking experience and knowledge.
Photo by Aristocrat. Licensed under Creative Commons.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
