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Social Network Profiles Are the New Email

Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 23rd, 2008 1:07 PM

Remember the days when it meant you were a drug dealer if you were young and wearing a pager? The same thing went for cell phones at one point. Eventually everyone had one or the other and it became a normal thing to have. Email came about and at one point it became “uncool” to not have an email address. At this point it is no longer cool or uncool, you must have an email address if you are going to get a job.

I would argue that the same thing now goes for social network profiles. I stumbled across an article entitled “Attention Boomers: Generation Y Expects to Find You on Social Networks.” As a member of Generation Y I can definitely say that I agree with this. Whenever I touch base with a new contact, the first thing I do is look them up on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Having access to that individual’s profile helps me to learn more about them and helps me learn a little more about their personality. It also provides more of a human element. The only excuse for your company to not have your employees on Facebook or other social networks is if you are in intelligence and keeping information classified is of utmost importance.

The argument against employees having social network profiles is that new recruits should be able to interact with employees in a completely professional environment. While I agree with that, I think that it is possible to have a professional interaction over a social network. I for one do so on a daily basis. Do you think everyone in the company should have a social network profile? Do most people in your company have one?

Posted in Social Networking
  

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 5 Comments

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    It certainly seems that the professional world is moving toward having social profiles at all levels. Just yesterday,I was alerted that the President of the software company I work for had created a Facebook profile. "Great, I'll add him!" I thought. Then, I began to second guess my initial response- largely due to my friends posting non-kosher comments about me and tagging me in incriminating photos. It's too hard to keep up with every comment and every tag. Although it concerns me, I am very pleased to see that such a broad spectrum of people are becoming involved in social networking.
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    This is a very topical post, Nick.

    Coincidentally, I was just about to send you a request to connect on LinkedIn when I saw the link to your blog post in your status update on Facebook. Twitter is down at the moment, so I can't check, but I'm guessing your status is linked to Twitter. Oh, the tangled web of gen Y social networking...

    The reason it's topical, though, is that not everyone agrees that they need to have a LinkedIn or Facebook profile. I gave a short seminar this week called "Introducing Web 2.0" for business, and one attendee said to me afterwards, "Okay, I know there are a lot of people on LinkedIn, but why do I need to be on LinkedIn?"

    This person is COO of one of the largest cities in the Northwest next to Seattle. He is a consummate pro when it comes to dealing with people and getting big jobs done on time.

    I told him something like you said above: There's no reason not to have these profiles. But that's not really much of an argument. I would rather have some data to back up that assertion. It's my next project. Find evidence that you really do need to have a profile on LinkedIn and Facebook, or that if you do, your chances of realizing career goals, business objectives, etc., are much higher.
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    Although I agree that LinkedIn is necessary professionally, I don't think Facebook is at that level. Personally I have both profiles, but I wouldn't necessarily add professional contacts on Facebook, nor do I use it to network.
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    The only social networking site I would EXPECT to find Boomers on is LinkedIn. If they have kids and are responsible enough to want to check up on them, they might be on FB.
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    I am exploring the utility of a social network at my company. My reasons for doing this are to increase the knowledge sharing within my organization (internal and external) and catalyze more self referencing with my market segments. Ultimately, it will have to come down to increasd $ for the company if we are going to spend resources on this. Linked in doesn't weem to meet these needs nor does facebook (especially if I don't want my competitors benefiting). I am looking at a service call Ning? Anybody know anything about this?

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