This post was written by Jody Jonnson
Small businesses thrive on their ability to network and with the popularity of social networking sites, they are shifting that zeal to get-together online on specialized, business-focused communities. Forrester Research Inc. expects small businesses’ adoption of social networking technology to grow by 20% to 33% during the current year. Many entrepreneurs have begun to carve out small business communities on spaces originally designed for individual users, such as the online directories Myspace.com and Facebook. The free community, which will be supported by online advertising, is designed to help small businesses connect with each other through robust searching tools and to gain access to resources such as “ask the expert forums” through partnerships with media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
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The battle to provide social networking in the enterprise is under way between solutions from established software vendors and readily available offerings such as Facebook and LinkedIn, with these sites possessing a lot of momentum, an industry insider stressed during a conference on July 11. Antony Brydon, former CEO and founder of Visible Path said, “I think we’re in a market that could end up looking a lot like the IM market, where consumer products like AOL IM gained dominance in the enterprise.” He added he did not take it for granted that companies such as Microsoft would dominate the business social networking space.
Technology, media, and telecommunications are poised for a significant transformation over the next 10 years because of a wireless social networking revolution, according to iSuppli. Recent research from iSuppli indicates that companies within these industries need to shift their strategies if they want to maintain relevance. Widespread adoption of mobile Internet devices like the iPhone will drive a new generation of wireless social networking businesses and business models beginning in 2009, iSuppli said.
While discussing the implementation and gradual rollout of Canadian Tire Corp.’s latest communications portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Corp.’s general manager of SharePoint platform and tools, Derek Burney, said organizations must cease shunning social networking tools such as wikis. He said Microsoft has seen a growing interest in the collaboration space due to a number of factors ranging from the threat of individual information overload to the shifting corporate landscape that has rapidly become more global in scope.