Social networking: Is there a bottom-line benefit?

By: Lynne Mack August 1, 2008 12:00 AM - YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Linkedin or Twitter, Dopplr and Jaiku – what are they?  They are virtual Social Networks.  Why do you need one and what will you gain from joining?   What is Social Networking?
We all know what networking is – from the local Cub Group (two intersecting networks the members and the parents).   Service clubs like Rotary, or the neighbourhood knitting circle.   Libraries are networks - so is Parliament, university, the RCMP and your company.
And if any one of these groups or organizations create an on-line connection through Facebook for example, then you have a Social Network. Simple really.   Just another buzz word.   Social Network is a map ‘living’ in the cyber cloud that flags relevant sites, initiated by the member to share common interests bringing friends or foe together.
By now you’re probably thinking Social Networking is only for teenagers. Well consider this: the average age of users on Ecademy is mid-40’s and for MySpace it’s mid-30’s.  Be reminded that Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace and he’s in his late 70’s.
Some of the virtual activities carried out while sitting in front of a screen can be as exciting as bungee jumping or as inane as watching someone putting on socks.  The lingo is activity streams – a log of everyday things as they happen.
Furthermore you can have all this and more with mobility – if you have the right technology.  Using Jaiku Mobile software with a Nokia S60 cell phone you can have a live phonebook that displays the activity streams: the availability and location of your Jaiku contacts right on your phone contact list.
It has been reported in the press that some governments and companies have banned the use of MySpace and Facebook in the workplace.   A good idea, as security and confidentiality could be breached in the workplace, but the wrong application and location.   What if social networking was “purpose-built” to capitalize and then adopted for the greater good of the organization.
Consider: an organization adopting online social networking tools to enhance internal collaboration, whether it be the private or public sector.  Governments reaching out to its citizens, corporations interacting with employees, customers and shareholders, and other stakeholders who don’t know they need to know!
The opportunities and advantages of Social Networking have not gone unnoticed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or NASA, who have implemented social networking tools like Web 2.0 and AJAX technologies.  For example: according to the director of eMarketing at the CDC, Janice Nall, many of their initiatives started out as pilot projects which are now making an impact.  Some are:
eCards – giving consumers ways to send greeting cards that share health related messages with family members.
Podcasts – the CDC downloaded more than half a million Podcasts last year featuring health related information.
Virtual worlds – CDC opened a virtual flu clinic on whyville.net, a site that explains a wide range of topics for children.
NASA on the other hand has been expanding its research efforts collaboratively online using its own three-dimensional, virtual meeting space.  According to Andrew Hoppin, director of NASA’s Ames Research CoLab, “it’s difficult to work with NASA if you don’t have relationships and you’re not in a social network (with NASA scientists)”.
The U.S. Intelligence Community implemented Intellipedia - an online system for collaborative data sharing that was founded in April 2006.   Intellipedia was created to share information on some of the most difficult subjects facing U.S. intelligence and to bring cutting-edge technology to its ever-more-youthful computer savvy workforce.  
Chris Rasmussen, who heads the Intellipedia program, said that,  “As of March 2008, Intellipedia hosted 35,000 articles (making a total of 200,000 pages) edited by 37,000 users”.  The system has been enhanced to include a YouTube-like video channel, a Flickr-like photo sharing feature, content tagging, blogs and RSS feeds.  This is powerful, far-reaching stuff.  Also in Rasmussen’s opinion, perhaps radical, that government workers should abandon e-mail (a major time-waster) and PowerPoint (sorry Microsoft) presentations in favour of online data posting, tagging and collaboration tools.
You don’t need to be a technical  whiz to implement social networking, but you do need to hire the expertise and have a solid grasp of the concept.  Understand the jargon;  Web 2.0, wikis, mashups, blogs, AJAX etc.  Especially define your outcomes.  According to Professor David C. Wyld at Southeastern Louisiana University he recommends:
1) Define your company’s purpose and goals.  2) Stay close to the process.  3) Make a time commitment.  4) Monitor and interact.  5) Be generous – it’s the familiar “what’s in it for me” scenario.  6) Be prepared for criticism.  7) Spell Check!  8) Keep it simple; more is less.  9) Make it interesting – use multimedia, not just text.  10) Be a student of blogging.
The downside:  as is always the case, like anything else, technology can be used for bad intent.  MySpace users have a rape case to deal with, and a Facebook user who is a student has been suspended after an assault victim put up a complaint on Facebook.
The workforce today, coming out of colleges and universities, are accustomed to using social networking technologies on a personal level and will expect the same level of information and accessibility to be available in the workplace. They are already self-trained and these skills should not be wasted or suppressed, and could be leveraged to the organization’s competitive advantage.
Imagine this scenario - what if we had all the technology now, back in the days of the Mississauga train derailment? We would have a social network so that when we logged on we would have determined where the accident occurred, calculating how close our house was to the accident, which would then calculate our evacuation route.  We would know this because the police and the transportation department would have this scenario already set up.   
Hospitals would be alerted to the potential population perimeter most vulnerable, then ambulance, fire and police would be dispatched.  Perhaps fewer police would be deployed to get the evacuees moving out because the evacuees would already know what to do. And where to go.  Religious organizations would be notified and evacuees would have a safe place to go.   Food supplies could be dispatched to cater to the reported capacity of each facility.   Family and friends not in the danger zone would be able to log on and determine that their loved ones are safe.  Employers,  knowing some of their workers are in the danger zone, can make allowances.  These  are just some of the services with which we could organize ourselves and our resources.
A Social Network can be built to fit, to engage the users, enhance their work experience, increase productivity and job satisfaction, reduce turn-over and improve the bottom line.  What the heck – more peace and love in a chaotic violent world!!  I still believe technology will save us.