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| Wednesday, 23 July 2008 | |
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Web 2.0 community networking is attracting big businesses but are they missing a trick?
According to a recent analysis from ABI Research networking through online communities in the consumer world has become a huge success, and now enterprises are beginning to embrace this form of technology. To enable such communication in a business environment, white label social networking vendors provide platforms that can be re-branded to meet the requirements of enterprises, and ABI forecasts indicate that this market will be worth nearly US$1.3bn in 2013. Potentially linking employees, customers, and other interested parties, enterprise social networking is most commonly seen as an aid to marketing, CRM, and general information distribution. “Social networking within and around the enterprise can deliver a number of benefits to a company, though some may be difficult to quantify,” ventures ABI industry analyst Zippy Aima. “For example, many networks can be searched by keyword, offering fast and easy access to company-wide pools of expertise. One vendor of these solutions targets only trade show and conference organisers. Their networks allow people attending the event to save time by learning who else is going, and setting up meetings in advance.” Setting up and running a social network is a specialised task, however, and can be costly. So most white label social networking vendors offer the technology through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, based on a subscription fee, which can be fairly economical for the customer. Client companies can add their own branding, look and feel, but have no other responsibilities or burdens. “White label enterprise social networking is a very young market, but a busy one,” notes Aima. “It is flooded with vendors, but most of them are only a few years old and still see annual revenues below US$5 million. Despite this market’s promise, they must overcome several challenges, including lack of customer education, competition from open standards, budget constraints, and the need for feature-rich applications.” But DIY – white label or otherwise – may not be the only enterprise social networking option, and businesses could be missing a trick if they fail to exploit the possibilities offered by public networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and LinkedIn. So reasons a new report being published this week by Info-Tech Research Group. Info-Tech reckons companies should now be staking claims on social networking services by creating pages and groups, just as they did by registering Internet domain names in the late 1990s. “Social network pages are the domain names of Web 2.0,” judges Tim Hickernell, associate lead research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group. “Companies need to consider mainstream public social network services to be the new Internet and will wonder why they missed the wave if they don't accept the relevance and benefits of social networking now.” Info-Tech argues that social networking sites have become a significant entry point for Internet users, so for consumers to find a company there needs to be a social network ‘shingle’ hanging outside. “Companies should 'own' the way their brand is presented and have some control on content,” adds Hickernell. “It's not good if the Big Box Company doesn't have content ownership of the Big Box social networking site on Facebook and its interests are misrepresented.” While accepting that enterprises can benefit from private social networks aimed at specific audiences such as employees, customers, suppliers and partners, Info-Tech says public networks such as those instanced above can be exploited for recruiting, product marketing and public relations, and reach a vast global audience, even if the enterprise has little control over those type of network services. John Williamson |
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