Social Networking for Business | Stacey Dahl

Social Networking for Business

Online social networking is not a new phenomena. It began as soon as the first email was forwarded to another person. Then throughout the 1980s and 1990s it expanded to take advantage of new technologies as they developed. From the first dialup BBS systems it went to the big onine services like AOL and CompuServe, then to Internet Newsgroups (USENET). When the internet reached mass popularity in the mid-1990s the web took over the social networking boom and web sites like eGroups and OneList sought to connect people online in ways they themselves might never have imagined. Soon sites like MySpace and Friendster came about bringing social networking to a new level.

With sites like these, social networking can be said to have attained ?critical mass? ? that point when enough users were in place, when the network was big enough to make it into something different. Prior to a few years ago, the great challenge online was simply finding someone to talk to. Most people were only using the internet to shop or to play games and weren?t interested in socializing online. Now that everyone is online (or so it seems) the internet has achieved a new role in business. New ?Web 2.0? networking sites like Facebook and Twitter make the social web easier to use than ever. Sites like Twittercollege have sprung up to support this new industry.

Businesses can now use the internet in ways they simply couldn?t before ? to find new suppliers, for customer feedback or market research. A simple poll on the company home page can net useful information on customers? concerns and opinions. Better they inform you about a problem they are having than the whole world. It?s easier to fix a problem before it becomes a bad review on a third-party web site.

Social networking is a prime point of contact between business executives too. Old-fashioned industry conventions and business expos are now obsolete as the same goal can now be achieved entirely online. Never before has it been easier to gain information from those who are successful in your field. Never before has business been so completely wired. Never before has the playing field been so level.

By: Gerry Li
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