Professional Networking

"Appeal of social networking is limited largely to industries where workers are fairly isolated from their colleagues on a day-to-day basis, like medicine, construction and sales." (Social Networking Goes Professional http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825239984310205.html)

Most people think of social networking sites as being merely a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Now that the internet is becoming more a part of everyday business use we are finding more and more professionals using social networking to communicate with other professionals. The reason for doing this is simple; it allows them to get opinions, advice, and to have others listen actively to what they are doing. For example a doctor could spend all day trying to call around to other doctor's in the same specialty and not get a call back but with a social networking site they are able to communicate with each other more conveniently without taking time away from their patients.

It is possible and even probable that this is going to become more of the business norm over the next decade; businesses will find more information readily available on sites like Facebook or Twitter rather than having to make multiple phone contacts that could waste precious time that employees do not have. All employees may not have a direct need for sites like these but for professionals such as accountants or sales representatives it could be a very good source of advice from other professionals in their fields. We already get offers on line at work so this would just be the next step in our journey to complete reliance on the internet for business. The next step will to be to find a way to make sure that those professionals presenting information on these sites are exactly who they say they are.

Vascellaro, J. (2007) Social Networking Goes Professional, Retrieved September 25, 2009 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825239984310205.html