Presence Technology

This post is aimed at people who don’t think that social media offers much real business value and that it’s more time-waster than productivity tool. One of my favorite quotes from Jimmy Fallon:

“Did you guys notice this? Twitter was down for two hours on Saturday. It was horrible. I was forced to call random people out of the phonebook and just tell them what I had for lunch.”

And that pretty much sums up how many people view social media—as an avenue for possibly meaningful content, but primarily as a means of sharing information that doesn’t have much business value. However, while social media actually does provide substantial business value, I believe two of its more important benefits in a business context will be (a.) its ability to allow people to communicate useful information in a way that would simply seem silly when delivered in another format, and (b.) to delve into a knowledge base of information that today is more or less kept hidden in people’s brains. Here’s what I mean:

• Imagine that you wanted to tell people you were at a particular Starbucks, enroute to another city, attending a conference next week, etc.—information that might be relevant to maybe three people at any given time (who might be at that conference or a block away) in your circle of friends, associates or acquaintances. Now, imagine sending an email with that information to a few thousand people three or four times a day. Worse, how about sending them a fax? It simply wouldn’t happen, and you wouldn’t be able to obtain the benefits of sharing this useful information.

Of course, this is an obvious example of how social media is used today, but it underscores the point that social media represents a new medium, not a replacement for email and other, more traditional forms of communication. Our own research shows that the a much larger proportion of people view email as more important compared to a year ago than view it as less important, indicating that social media really is a supplement to traditional communications, not its substitute.

• More important, social media—particularly purpose-built, corporate social media—represents something of a knowledge directory that is generally not available via other systems. While the idea is not new (Linkadoo and others were focused on this years ago), social media enables the sharing of information in ways that are simply impractical via other methods. Let’s say you want to find someone with knowledge of Hadoop-based software who also had worked in healthcare earlier in their career. Or someone who was familiar with the particular marketing manager with whom you’re on the phone right now. Or you need to find just the right restaurant for a customer event in a city with which you’re unfamiliar. The right social media capability can act as that repository and distribution mechanism for the tidbits of knowledge that are perhaps too obscure to put into a database or to codify on a resumé or that would never be assembled across the diverse array of contacts you might have on Twitter or Facebook. In short, social media represents a tool for bringing that kind of information together and to provide real business value as a result.

And, in case you’re wondering, I had an enchilada and an apple for lunch today.