Have you ever been embarassed by your father dancing like an ill-coordinated jellyfish at a wedding to some 70's or 80's 'classic' ? Have you ever been mortified when your mum decides to dress as a 22 year old ? We sure do, and worse still, we get the same feeling when 'social networking' is mentioned increasingly in corporate land. Now, one thing is for sure, we cannot get away for the dramatic impact (which is vastly understood as yet) of social networking on our culture as it is becoming all pervasive.
However when we see the topic of social networking in corporate spheres it is often by way of a desperate desire to be seen as 'current', 'with it', 'down with the kids', and more worryingly, a desire to make money out of it for corporate means that has not been thought through properly. Trendiness in management consulting is something that is very aligned with dad dancing because it is often via an older generation out of step with a younger generation but eager to please and be accepted as thought-leaders when it isn't true. If there is money to be made a the expense of a younger generation, you can be absolutely certain someone will try it.
A classic example is the often-seen desire for a corporation to include a clock on the home page of a SharePoint intranet as it is perceived as 'useful'. One should perhaps take note that younger generations rarely wear a watch due to the fact that every gadget and mobile device tells the correct time, all the time. In another similar vein, California school children were asked why they wouldn't use the school email system, with the overwhelming response that 'email is for old people'. Yet your parent's (or boss's) mastery of writing an email is somewhat viewed as a forward step!
Why then are we witnessing so many management consulting firms, and recruitment organisations jumping on the social networking bandwagon. Well, first of all it makes these companies appear as 'current', secondly it allows them to feel they are not being left behind in an ever-changing technological age, and thirdly, someone can smell money. I remember so well in the 1970's when a thousand companies were set up to cater for the skateboard craze across the globe, and almost all of them had vanished as we hit 1980 - they came to learn the jargon, they had the money to be seen as influencers, they made their cash and then made a quick exit. Will the same happen again with social networking in corporate land - very possibly.
Okay so what do we think is really going on ? Well when we see so many untrendy, traditional corporate firms getting excited about social networking what they mean is that there is a way of making money through accessing a large pool of resources that have, to date, not been traditionally accessible to them (or more usually, avoided them). Let's take recruitment as an example. Recruiters traditionally build a database of people with skills and a CV and then match them by one means or another to job vacancies. It has been the way for decades. Rather like dating agencies really. Suddenly we see an influx of discussions regarding recruitment using social networking - in other words, when we have a lack of resources is there a way to reach and attract those we may not have found otherwise. Have you stopped to consider that these people don't want to be found?
I remember reading a website in the USA once regarding the ability to trace and locate individuals. The website asked the simple question, why not just email them or call them - and ask yourself the question, if you have to trace someone, should you really be trying to contact them at all. In simple terms, people like to manage, organise and control who they are in touch with, who they contact and specifically who they do not wish to be contacted by. Spam calls to home phones and spam email to our inboxes have been a problem for over a decade and are now on the wain. So why would anyone think it is a good idea to try and use social networking environments to, in effect, spam people who are most probably not interested in your services ?
One only has to ask an audience whether they click on pay per click search results to find that many people avoid these ads because they don't like being sold to. No one likes walking into a store to have a look around only to be pounced upon by three shopfloor assistants with targets to achieve. Do you read the junkmail pushed through your letterbox, no us neither.
So why is there an obsession in corporate land with social networking? Well because there are hundreds of millions of people who are inter-related or connected to eachother for social reasons - but maybe, just maybe you can sell them something, or recruit them, but at least make money out of them, or worse still, talk about the topic of social networking in general and charge for it. Social networks are 'socially-driven' whether it be family, love, likes, shared hobbies or egotistical requirements to be 'seen as popular'. People are connected for private and personal reasons. Do you have 1000 Facebook friends ? But whatever the reason these internet communities are not called 'business networks' for a very good reason. Social means 'not work'.
Let us relate it to SharePoint. SharePoint is a relatively small community of talent which is growing but which is still less than the number of roles available. Each recruitment firm wants to get as many SharePoint people on their books as possible (often without any vetting) so that they can place them for a fee. That's fine as that is how the model works. The issue is that recruitment is a very tough and cut-throat business and any recruitment firm wants to be the one who finds the person and places them, thus sustaining a business relationship with the corporate client (they don't care about the person being place in general). So what happens when the resource pool becomes very limited? Well the recruiters start to think of other ways of attracting talent so that they can place them elsewhere. Personally I have had two agents from the same company, one who placed me and the other trying to lure me away from that role to a different firm purely for commission ! When one has talents in short supply, one will be very careful who one chooses to work with - period.
So social networking. Yes a huge talent pool accessible in a way that was never possible before Well maybe not actually. People are now hiding their Facebook profiles, making themselves non-searchable, hiding their connections and limiting access to personal information. Why, because people are quickly discovering that they are not as in control of who can contact them as they may desire. The social networking communities have matured enough to know what they like and what they do not. Then late in the day the men in the black suits arrive banding around the term 'social networking' as if they had just discovered the largest gold mine in the world, at least five years too late.
Social networking is not new. Remember the communities on Compuserve in the mid to late 1990's and how popular they were? We all have social networks beyond the internet in our daily lives, the people who know, the people we share a beer or dinner with, the people we hook up with for social events. We have our social network - we sms them and call them up. Interestingly half of my friends don't even use an internet social network but I still talk to them and see them regularly, if not more regularly than internet 'friends'.
So why now? Well because Facebook and similar social networks are becoming entrenched in our daily lives as a means of communication, real time social communication. Linkedin is a business networking service that is increasingly becoming bastardized from its excellent origins. Looking at the Linkedin news feeds today it is increasingly resembling boys in a sales office, sharing banter and finding humour in each other's comments. That's okay but its detracting from the value of Linkedin and making it feel like a club one should either join or avoid. Do I share my business connections, do I heck for the simple reason is that it is my private business networking build over years of professional discussions and business connections that I am not going to share with any lazy recruiter out there.
Therefore, the last 18 months has seen huge amounts of corporate speak, business seminars and recruiter strategies regarding social networking - I don't remember seeing these people in Compuserve in 1996. I remember the days when a recruiter would buy me a pint or lunch and form a valuable business relationship - not any more. These days everything appears to be performed on the cheap and I cannot remember a time when I last met a recruiter face to face. One should remember that people are far from stupid and know which firms are good, which are bad to work for on reputation, how much their value is in the marketplace and where they would like to go next. Trying to enter and sell within a social networking space won't help you, if the product you are selling isn't popular.
So the next time you see a thread or advertisment in corporate land regarding social networking as yourself a simple question. Does this company actually fully understand the topic of social networking and has a long history in the subject - because if not, you may simply be witnessing your dad at a wedding trying to get to grips with some dodgy dance moves to Lady Gaga. Best avoided.
