The last week or so has seen a deluge of posts covering Facebook. As always the more exuberant predict it is the Next Big Thing likely to knock MySpace out the park. Yeah, yeah, maybe, so what. The posts that interest me however are those that look at this from a business perspective.
In a Twitter conversation, Paul Walsh said:
@everyone who emailed me saying 'I don't see FB for business' - everyone person mentioned in my post is on there
Check out the 'names' Paul's been schmoozing with and you'll get a sense of what he means. But for me, the most interesting post comes from Harvard professor Andrew McAfee:
Sameer and Rachel (students) demonstrated how they could add their Harvard courses to their profiles via a nice set of pulldown menus. Harvard's CIO was more than a little surprised by this, as he didn't think that the University had given the site permission to integrate its course catalog. The students replied that this was probably true, and that Facebook was probably just accessing publicly available data from the Registrar's website. I can't say whether this is in fact the case, but if so it's an interesting example of a lightweight and opportunistic mashup.
Score one to the users then and a good example of bottom up ingenuity in bypassing traditional CIO processes but in a 'no harm, no foul' manner. I prefer this to the rough and tumble 'You're screwed' approach of some others. Andrew then goes on to say:
...isn't this very close to what employes within a company also want to do? And if so, doesn't Facebook provide a demonstrably powerful, popular, and easy-enough-to-use infrastructure for doing it?
Yes it does. An example. Sam Sethi is building out a media property called BlogNation. He Twittered me asking if I'd set up a BN group inside Facebook. One minute later - done. 24 hours later - 22 members. Sam IM'd me today asking for a logo change - a minute later - done. It's the immediacy plus the welter of lightweight applications that makes FaceBook so compelling. Something Andrew acknowledges in what he calls: 'an integrated collaboration environment.' Andrew concludes:
I'm still not quite sure why this was so important to me (and I hope the friend-collecting urge abates soon so I can do other things) but I'll attest that technology-facilitated network building is a compelling activity. If companies want to bring their employees to the collaboration technologies they've installed, they could do a lot worse than giving them the opportunity to build their social networks like Facebook does.
In which case I'd suggest looking at the Facebook communities springing up around KPMG, Deloitte and PwC. These are micro communities reflecting the common needs of individuals within larger organisations. These are people that would otherwise remain isolated. I suspect they will become powerful voices for change. Business managers would do well to join the fray and see what's being said about your company.
In the meantime, Jemima Kiss has written a light hearted piece that reflects what I suspect is the bemusement felt by those who find the whole Facebook thing a bit juvenile.
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Communications, Innovationlink to original post