Own the data and be indispensible

Social media sites come and go.  Facebook controls the consumer space at the moment but social users are fickle as MySpace and Friendster found to their cost.  However, business sites are a bit different.  Business users are more conservative about investing time and effort in social media as time is precious and nobody wants to risk their professional reputation on a fly-by-night service.  This is where LinkedIn has steadily built a business by being THE site for professionals to maintain an online presence.  I wrote about this last year and although it's anyone's guess whether LinkedIn is worth its current market value of $10 billion, the company certainly seems to be the only game in town for online social business networking.  Despite a hiccup in June the share price has bounced back and is now 16% above its flotation price.  Pandora or the Dow Jones index have not fared so well.  

Pandora is not short of competitors such as Spotify and Last.fm and relies on paid-for content from the music industry.  LinkedIn, as with other social networks, gets its data from its users who have an interest in contributing this for free and keeping it up-to-date.  It's hard to see how a competitor could come in and take that away in the short term but I suppose Salesforce.com and its Jigsaw acquisition could be a threat.  

What is the future for professional associations?

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the impact that informal and virtual communities might be having on established professional bodies.  I find I am getting a lot of value from the LinkedIn groups and other online communities including several run within Google Groups.  The discussions that go on in these places and the ability to ask and answer questions of other members provides much of the functionality that professional bodies have traditionally offered.  I see 4 key advantages that virtual communities offer over professional bodies:

1. They often cut across traditional barriers and link individuals from a variety of backgrounds and professions who share common interests that transcend the articles of association of bodies that may have been drawn up over 100 years ago;
2. They are easy to join and usually free;
3. Group members can be quick to respond to issues and questions - no bureaucratic committees to go through;
4. They tend to emerge from the grass roots to address specific issues and pursue common interests rather than from the top down. Some professional bodies give the impression (sometimes unfairly) they exist to serve the interests of their employees rather than their members.

Of course, professional associations also have their advantages such as having the resources to act as advocates for a profession, helping with the professional development of members and offering physical spaces for members to meet.  Some even have legal rights conferred on them requiring membership for employment in certain professions although this might be seen as an unhealthy monopoly and not always be in the broader interests of society.  

I'm not a technophile who thinks that the internet and its associated services and technologies are going to sweep away industries, organisations and practices over night.  However, I do believe some radical changes are taking place in the ways people communicate, collaborate and share information. One of the key functions of professional associations is to offer a space for people to gather, share information and pursue common interests.  Services like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google also offer this functionality and people are increasingly taking to them.  When physical meetings are required these online tools work well in organising meet ups in cafes and bars.  I see this happening a lot in Brighton where a vibrant new media industry utilises the many watering holes and community work spaces around the city.  Many professional associations are also using these tools to help their members communicate with each other.  However, I can imagine a time, not too far away, when members will start to question what is the value their association offers if most of the conversations are taking place on online platforms hosted somewhere else.  Will it be possible to justify charging annual subscriptions of several hundred pounds to pay for buildings and employees? 

What do you think?

LinkedIn Groups - worth exploring

I've been on on LinkedIn for several years but have not used the people search / networking aspect of it much.  I can see its value in the commercial world and a lot of the companies I have been talking to recently use this part of it a lot.  However, what I find really useful are the Groups which are set up around specific areas of interest.  Some of the debates and information which people contribute to have been very helpful in my work.  One of the problems with other similar online communities of interest is that they often end up being used by members to tout their companies and services which can be a turn off for other users. Although this does happen on some of the LinkedIn groups I belong to it is not a major problem and the value of the information posted usually outweighs this minor inconvenience.  The discussion on the Future Social Media group pictured here has been particularly useful for me.

If you haven't checked out LinkedIn Groups yet I would recommend having a browse of what is available. If you cannot find anything to match your interests you can even start one up yourself.

Corporate use of social media

Computer Weekly has a couple of videos on social media in the workplace which are worth a look.

First, Mark Kobayashi-Hillary gives advice for IT managers on using social networking tools and points out where it can go wrong:

Second, Ariel Eckstein of LinkedIn talks about how his company's service can help with recruiting: