Although it's not their main purpose, Facebook and MySpace allow users to look at work-related subjects. LinkedIn is more focused on this field. But Gartner believes that, in the future, the business aspects of social networking will become a much bigger deal.
People are going to continue to embrace social networking sites as time goes by, and Nick Ingelbrecht, Gartner's research director, stated, "Social networking software holds enormous potential for improving the management of large enterprises." Microsoft's TownSquare concept (an intra-company network) seems like the sort of useful thing he might have in mind.
TownSquare is just a platform for testing, though, and Ingelbrecht continued, "[W]ork in this area is still immature and in the meantime enterprises should be aware of what is happening in the world of consumer social networking and implement appropriate usage policies for employees' use of services such as Facebook and MySpace on company time."
So entrepreneurs and established businesses may want to be careful when dealing with social networks, and free-for-all and spaghetti-at-a-wall approaches should probably remain last resorts.
It'll be an interesting next step, though, if Facebook's new design (which is supposed to launch this week) bridges some of the gaps between social and business uses.
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business networking sites
I agree, business networking sites are the future vehicle for all business deals. There is enormous growth potential in these sites as more corporations jump on board.
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