Social Networking and the Enterprise
A recent IDC Canada study on Canadian users and their habits with online social networking platforms has identified five distinct categories of social networking sites: friend, group general interest, dating, blogging, and media sharing. There are obviously sites that would span these categories, but I think most sites that span these categories would still have a primary function that is facilitated by a majority of their users; although YouTube does offer blogging, it is still primarily a media site.
What might be more interesting than the five categories listed above (honestly, I hope no money was invested in creating that list as it would seem to be a fairly obvious breakdown) is the fact that 51 percent of Canadians that are online have their own profile on some sort of platform. The number itself would seem to be low, at least in my mind, but I think it ignores or hides the simple fact that while 51 percent of Canadians would have some form of online profile, the number of online profiles attriubted to Canadians would probably represent a number significantly higher than the number of online users. The group that is represented by the 51 percent would probably have, on average, 2 - 3 of these types of profiles.
This article suggests that the Web 2.0 platform, spearheaded by social media and social platforms, is a good example of how Enterprises can interact with the consumer and get a better understanding of their wants and needs. This again would seem to be fairly obvious, but I’m frequently floored by the inability of companies to grasp the simple concepts and features that new technologies have created.
With minimal investment, a company could easily carve out a unique niche that allows for the best possible product and/or service to be defined by careful and creative co-ordination by those interested in the product and/or service and those that provide them.