A con­tact of mine, Lindy, sent through a link to an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the Econ­o­mist — Social net­work­ing will become a ubiq­ui­tous fea­ture of online life. That does not mean it is a busi­ness. She also asked some ques­tions of the group she sent the link to

It’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle, albeit quite short. And it touches on a num­ber of issues that are very pertinent.

She asked:

What are your favourite net­works? Are they help­ing you in a busi­ness sense?
Do you see poten­tial for them to help you in a busi­ness sense in the future?

The notion of ROI on social net­work­ing tools in busi­ness (Enter­prise 2.0) has been the sub­ject of sig­nif­i­cant dis­cus­son and research the past few months; mostly draw­ing the con­clu­sion that see­ing ROI in terms of dol­lars on Enter­prise 2.0 is dif­fi­cult at best. A quick Google search reveals more than you might care to ever read.

What is mea­sur­able, how­ever is qual­i­ta­tive return on allow­ing and using social net­works, social media and E2.0. Are your peo­ple col­lab­o­rat­ing more eas­ily? Are the silos break­ing down? Are the Three Cs of social net­work­ing — con­ver­sa­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­nity becom­ing embed­ded in your cor­po­rate DNA?

It’s these things that are the true mea­sures of the effec­tive­ness of these tools for busi­ness. In using them, risks such as los­ing infor­ma­tion through depar­ture of staff with sig­nif­i­cant tacit knowl­edge can be mit­i­gated and pos­i­tive organ­i­sa­tional effects such as pro­vi­sion of a learning-​​based cor­po­rate cul­ture and improve­ments in employee engage­ment can be seen.

For acid­labs, the use of and teach­ing organ­i­sa­tions about the use of social net­work­ing and Enter­prise 2.0 tools are both crit­i­cal. In the first instance, it’s me eat­ing my own dog food — prov­ing the worth of the infor­ma­tion I sell as a con­sult­ing prod­uct. In the sec­ond, I really do believe that open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, knowl­edge shar­ing and break­ing down of organ­i­sa­tion silos, all aided by the use of good social net­work­ing tools is the future of busi­ness.

For me, I make use of many social net­works. I’m prob­a­bly active on in excess of 20 and a heavy user of 5 – 7.

Lindy also asked:

If your social net­work­ing is not help­ing you in a busi­ness sense… what do you think could change that?

If using social net­works isn’t prov­ing pro­duc­tive and use­ful for your busi­ness — tak­ing into account that the ROI is soft and hard to mea­sure — you’re prob­a­bly not doing it right. You need to take a look at you activ­i­ties and maybe the social net­work­ing readi­ness of your organisation.