The Outlook for Social Networking Technology
MIT's Technology Review has an excellent primer on social networking technology and its potential business applications.
The premise behind this new social-networking technology is simple: you may know a lot of people from work, college, church, or your neighborhood, but you probably don’t know exactly who their friends are—and forget about their friends’ friends. But join an online social network and invite a few acquaintances, and the software will begin to reveal previously hidden second- or third-degree connections that can lead to an interview, business meeting, or tee time with that elusive potential client or employer.
Advocates see lots of promise:
It might sound a bit convoluted, but it’s simple in practice—and users claim that they get tangible results. Take Marcus Colombano, a media and technology marketing consultant in San Francisco. Colombano read about a company he thought should be a client, popped its name into LinkedIn, and found he was connected to four people with contacts at the company. He wrote up a proposal and sent it to a friend who had a contact who knew the CEO. Four hours later he got an e-mail from the CEO asking for a meeting. “I’m going to get an opportunity to sit down and do a proposal with these people,” Colombano says. “It’s really quite cool.”But there are skeptics:
Valdis Krebs, a management consultant and software developer who has nearly 20 years of experience with social-networking software, thinks corporate social networks will always miss the nuances that matter in the real world. Often, a network map won’t come up with a reliable chain of connections to a potential client an employee wants to target, or “we find out that someone is difficult to work with, or they give you stuff that’s not what you need,” says Krebs. “A day face to face is worth a thousand e-mails.”Adds Clay Shirky, adjunct professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University:
“If anybody six degrees from you could get your attention, you’d be time-spliced to death.”