The rise of social networks is changing the way people interact with each other, as well as how they work or do business. One cannot ignore that social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people and have power and impact in our personal and professional lives. Facebook, MySpace, Blooger, Tagged and Twitter are the largest players on the global stage. In a global connected economy, success as a professional and competitiveness as a company depend upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust.
Although we cannot isolate the business elements of social networking sites, we are going to focus our 31st Newsletter on the social networks mainly used by business professionals.
As there are so many options available, our advice is to study carefully which tool you are going to invest your time in. Good luck with your networking!


• Social Networks for Business or Professional Purposes

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an interconnected network of 41 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Spoke.com
Spoke allows you to find and connect with 55 million businesspeople at 2.3 million companies. Focused on providing sales prospects, it reaches beyond traditional professional networks by allowing you to connect with anyone in the network, regardless of whether they are a member.

Xing.com
Over 7 million business professionals use XING – the global business network offered in 16 different languages - to do business and promote their careers. XING makes networking and professional contact management simple.

Ecademy.com
Ecademy enables business people to connect through online networking using social media tools, business networking events and 1-2-1 meetings. It is a community that advocates, connects and helps one another. Using the tools and resources that Ecademy has developed, a small business can quickly and effectively find the right kind of people it needs to grow.

Ryze.com
A social networking website designed to link business professionals, particularly new entrepreneurs. With more than 500,000 members in more than 200 countries, it was the first of the new generation of social networking services. Both paid and unpaid membership services are offered.

GoBigNetwork
The Go BIG Network is the world’s largest community for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others who have an interest in facilitating the rapid growth of start-up companies.

Innocentive 
InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions and public sector and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation. It is a global network of more than 160,000 of the world's brightest minds in the world's first Open Innovation Marketplace™.

MeettheBoss.com
A business networking tool for financial services executives around the world. It is used by over 1,300 financial institutions. It is used for networking and as a problem-solving business tool. Over 200,000 executives now actively network in the community. Only financial executives gain membership. The community is secure.

To find out more…

Wikipedia – A list of the major active social networking websites


• Tools for Social Networks

Business Intelligence Tools
Analyze what’s being said about your company now and over time on the social networks. There are many companies, such as SkeltLab, Radian6, TechRigy, Sisomo and RightNow, that can help you mine conversations about your company, aggregate them, evaluate the positive/negative aspects and help you respond to them.

Distribution Tools
Flickr
Flickr is an image and video-hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular website for users seeking to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.

SlideShare
SlideShare is a presentation-sharing website where users can upload, view and share presentation files. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar.

• Bibliography

We strongly recommend taking a look at some interesting materials on social networking available at the IESE Library:

-Forrester Reports:

The Future of the Social Web
By Jeremiah K. Owyang
April 27, 2009

Top Social Computing Predictions for 2009
By Jeremiah K. Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Sean Corcoran, Steven Noble
January 27, 2009

How to Choose the Right Social Technologies
By Josh Bernoff
March 4, 2008

-Articles at Business Source Complete

-Books: search the IESE Library Catalog:

Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work, and World
Fraser, Matthew
Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, c2008
19.25-FRA

Groundswell : Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Li, Charlene. and Josh Bernoff
Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business Press, c2008
19.20-LI

Here Comes Everybody: How Digital Networks Transform our Ability to Gather and Cooperate
Shirky, Clay
New York : Penguin Press, 2008
19.20-SHI

-Free Reports on the web:

Global Faces on Networked Places
March 2009
A Nielsen report on social networking’s new global footprint.

Top 10 Social Networking and Blog Sites
Nielsen

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