Social Networking in the Workplace

Over the past five years, use of social media has seen tremendous growth; not just in usage by the average consumer, but also by businesses that are chasing these consumers. In order to take advantage of the potential benefits, businesses must first understand the history of social networking, who the users are (through statistical analysis and business intelligence), the marketing and information management of this platform including CRM (customer relationship management), what potential legal and ethical issues might arise (and how to manage them), where social networking is heading in the future, and finally; whether it is an appropriate fit from a business perspective to invest time and money into social networking. The term “social media” is used to describe the websites and applications used for social networking (Oxford, n.d.). Thus, the terms “social media” and “social networking” are not identical, but they share sufficient similarities to be used interchangeably throughout the following paragraphs. Social networking is a web-based service that allows individuals to contract a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections within the system (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Fifteen years ago social networking did not even exist. The first social networking site, SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997 and was the first to combine the buddy lists that AIM and ICQ featured with the ability to create profiles (that major dating sites used). By the year 2000, SixDegrees was out of business as early adopters found there was not much that could be done once friend requests were accepted. Between 1997 and 2001, a number of community tools experimented with various combinations of profiles and public friend lists including AsianAvenue, LiveJournal and LunarStorm (2007). The next wave of social networking came in the early to mid 2000’s with the

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