Networking sites are proving useful tools for business
We all like to be popular, it's human nature. But in business we need to be popular, we need to be known, we need to network.
My business is internet development, and the internet is currently at the forefront of a movement that's been dubbed social networking.
First there was Friends Reunited, then MySpace, and more recently Facebook. These are all websites where people vie for the appearance of popularity by amassing huge numbers of friends they neither know nor communicate with meaningfully.
And really, apart from vanity and a social security blanket, the users of these sites have very little to gain from all this frenzied activity. But businesses – we have much to gain from networking. How often have you found a better, cheaper or more conventiently located supplier just after you've signed that big contract?
It's not as if the business community is poorly supported when it comes to networking sites. One of the first and best such sites is LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) which is aimed at the business community.
We're even working on one such site ourselves, called MyVector (www.myvector.info) It's designed to help jetsetting businessmen to reduce their carbon footprint by aligning their travel schedules (and their golfing diaries).
It all sounds very heady, but back when I was a corporate frequent flyer I'd have found it invaluable.
I'm a member of LinkedIn, and for a while, I received a steady stream of friends and former colleagues asking me to join their network. But eventually that dried up.
Maybe that was just because I can appear dour and churlish, but the same didn't happen to me on MySpace or Facebook, both of which I'm on for purely research purposes, of course.
So I'm guessing it's either something to do with the LinkedIn site, or with its users. It's a very good site – true, it doesn't offer the same opportunities for nostalgic reunions that Friends Reunited once did, or the opportunity to become a werewolf, or zombie, like Facebook offers. Maybe it should. Because businessmen and women clearly need some encouragement to use these easily available and effective methods of extending their real-world networks.
Or am I wrong? Are my circle of tech-savvy friends and colleagues, usually among the first to adopt the next wave, atypically slow to grasp this opportunity? Is the business community of Wakefield making use of virtual networking to extend their business reach? You can let me know at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/178/604
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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