Social networking evolution has been swift and is accelerating, with no end immediately in sight. It is merging with messaging and collaboration on the one hand, as well as becoming increasingly international and developing into niche areas. Defining what falls into this range is becoming increasingly difficult as new sites reach out into peripheral areas. The development pattern has been based around community creation first, then meeting the social and communications needs of those communities through site features and apps.
Over the past two years, there have been a number of important changes in social networking applications, some of which are of particular importance to business. Among these are increasing development of mobile social networks and links to mobile social networks; integration of content and access between networking sites, as between Facebook, WordPress and Twitter; and greater use of social networks by advertising and marketing.
Consolidation has been particularly important. Social networking sites are now linked to wikis, blogs, and instant messaging, effectively making older applications that simply provided these collaborative features somewhat redundant. Microsoft’s Sharepoint application remains strong in the enterprise space, but it is being used for document management and limited document-oriented collaboration rather than for more flexible social networking.
Concepts are still being defined, and social networking heavily overlaps with enterprise collaboration, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. Many of the same facilities are on offer, though branded differently aimed at different audiences. Different ways to present material are also being explored. Social networking sites are used to build community, to interact with associates, and to share material of interest that can be placed in digital form. They permit people to expand personal networks through broadcast messages (personal status, public comments, shared material, etc.) that provide personal social information in between direct contacts.
Social Networking is creating fundamental new ways of communication. While the providers struggle with ways to make it profitable, it is important to consider the impact on business. Changing the way people communicate has enormous implications both for how people work and for what products can be sold to consumers.
This is the subject of a recent Executive Update that I wrote for Cutter Consortium. It can be found at http://cutter.com.
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