I was asked the other day how I thought social networking would impact the enterprise.
I came up with the example of the old Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant. Even though they were blind, if they could easily talk to one another, they would have been to figure out what was going on.
Just like any organization.
With social networks being in the news so much these days, I get a lot of questions from people asking what social networking is really all about. So here is my social networking story.
Social networks consist of the following pillars:
(1) You define your personality on the Web through your profile - what books and music you like, photos you have taken, etc.
(2) The whole idea of a social network is to socialize, so you need to tell the social network about your friends. Your friends make up your social graph.
(3) When you do things like upload photos, write comments, send little gifts, etc., you want your friends to know, and you also want to know what they are up to. This is the function of the activity stream - an ongoing log of what people are doing (the “newsfeed” in Facebook).
(4) You do things on a social network, like play a game, find a date, “poke” someone, post a classified ad, etc. You do this through an application.
(5) You can create a new or join an existing group, where like-minded people hang out and discuss a common interest, like Jon Stewart or Spongebob.
(6) You can also join a network - a group that you are automatically part of by virtue of the fact that you live in Chicago, or went to school at Yale, or even that you live in a particular apratment building.
