Enterprise or Business Social Networks

Intro
Business or Enterprise Social Networks, much like consumer social networks, are growing rapidly and are available in a range of functionalities, sizes and shapes.  Among the options that are out there for business people and enterprises are the following:

• Cross-company business social networks - Ryze, LinkedIn, Spoke and newly launched IncBizNet "the networking community for small companies", etc.
• Business networks at consumer sites like Facebook
• Enterprise social networks or sub-sets of selected tools
• Branded communities for end customers

The interest in social networks by businesses is projected to grow as reported by Redmond Development News "according to a recent survey of 273 IT professionals by Forrester, 28 percent of enterprises with more than 500 employees say their enterprise has some form of social networking initiative, while 20 percent are considering it."

Meanwhile, IDC has broken down the emerging market into three segments according to WebProNews "These include: self-service applications used by groups and marketing campaign teams; brand applications that focus on persistent customer engagement; and enterprise applications that provide more effective ways of working with customers, partners and other external parties".  They project a growth in investment in these segments to $428.3 million by 2009, from $46.8 million in 2006.

So why the interest in business social networks?  According to CIO Insight, SelectMinds (one of the business social networking vendors), "claims users are seeing quantitative and qualitative results in terms of new business generation, productivity, retention and branding."

Social Networks Reviewed
Before we go into each of these social networking options, some of you may still be a bit confused about the social networking buzz.  Social networks are typically based on linking together individuals based on their interests and expertise.  They often revolve around individuals developing a profile and then identifying explicit and implicit connections according to Cerado, a business social networking specialist.  In an Executive Briefing (PDF) at their site they identify 10 ways businesses and associations can use social networks including the following:

1. Customer and Member relationship development
2. Customer support
3. Expert knowledge identification
4. Post-acquisition integration
5. Providing a whole product by linking related products and services
6. Understanding and visualizing organizational communication paths
7. Meeting facilitation and preparation
8. Extending meeting shelf lif
9. Sharing Knowledge
10. Pulling together appropriate team

To look at social networks in a more visual fashion, I found this video from The CommonCraft Show that provides a simple and easy to understand explanation of a consumer social network.  For corporate or enterprise social networks substitute jobs for clients and love for business relationships and you'll get the concept completely.

Public Social Networks
Cross-company public sites like Ryze, LinkedIn, Spoke and IncBizNet are gaining followers and supporters as business people follow the consumer sector in recognizing the potential benefits of social networks for business purposes including lead generation, recruitment, market intelligence and business gossip. The specialized business social networks are being joined by the consumer social networks where "business-centric applications" or widgets are being developed and launched at sites like Facebook according to Redmond Development News.  They also report that companies like Apple and Microsoft have set up employee networks on Facebook. 

Enterprise Social Networks
In the enterprise, we're seeing a range of applications that are promoted under the Enterprise Social Networking banner.  These range from full service networked applications with blogs, wikis, networks, video sharing, etc. tied together to more specialized applications targeting a sub-set of activities. 

In a recent interview I conducted with Geoff Hyatt CEO of Contact Networks, he described how his software was designed to solve a business problem that a number of consulting, law, investment and other professional service firms have - capturing and making the relationship asset information from throughout the firm available for use.  Contact Network's software is designed to operate behind the business firewall to enable the capturing of this data for business development purposes, improved client management and coordinating relationships.  He reports that one advantage of his service is that there is no data entry required on the part of highly compensated and busy team members, but rather the software captures, reports and can be queried on relationships based on the frequency, recency and length of customer relations identified through the data analysis of existing enterprise information systems. 

One advantage of closed enterprise social networks is the security and authentication inherent within network applications behind the firewall.

Other vendors that are in the Enterprise Social Networking space include major players like Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems, but also smaller providers like the following:

• Awareness Networks
• Cerado Haystack
• Contact Networks
• Intronetworks
• Mentor Scout
• Ning
• SelectMinds
• Small World Labs
• Social Platform
• Pringo Networks
• Visible Path
• Web Crossing

If you have experience with any of these or are aware of other social networks, please let me know and I'll update my listing accordingly.