Social Networking in the Business

Posted by Jason Egan

October 1, 2008

Several companies have released as of lately social networking applications targeted at business users as opposed to the general public. Some of these companies/applications include:

Since I have become a regular (maybe addict is a better term) user of Twitter, I find that I now rarely use e-mail, and I haven’t even logged into an instant messenger program in weeks. The idea of microblogging seems to just work better for collaboration and communication than does email or IM. On Twitter, I made a comment about Present.ly being more like e-mail 2.0 than just another Twitter clone:

http://twitter.com/jasonegan/statuses/926264496

Shortly after making this comment, Present.ly picked up on my tweet and promptly answered back:

http://twitter.com/presently/statuses/926317568

Microblogging will become as ubiquitous as email and IM.

However, while I do think that microblogging will become mainstream in the future, I think that these companies may be a little ahead of their time. Of course, we all know that Internet ages like cat years, and the time will be sooner that we may think. It may also take some time for companies to be willing to pay for something called social networking.

Unfortunately, corporate America in many cases doesn’t want us doing anything “social” while on the job.

Afterall, they’re not paying us to be social, right? Most companeis will have to see communications solutions like these in practice at large companies, or see them used at a conference in order to drink the social kool-aid.

What are your thoughts on the possibilities social networking gaining traction in the workplace? What hurdels do you see?

Social Networking