Reflections...

Article Reflection
Articles: Why Facebook and MySpace Won't Change the Workplace & Why Your Company Needs To Be On Facebook

Both the reads were very interesting and provided two opposite views on the topic.
The article Why Facebook and MySpace Won't Change the Workplace is sort of a continuation to my blog titled “Why Web 2.0 & Social Media”. It elaborates more on the topics covered by Dr. Mennecke in lecture 1 of last week. I found it very intriguing the way Tom outlines the advantages and disadvantages of Social Networking in work places. The way Social Networking affects individuals is different from the way it affects an organization. According to him Social Networking has more advantages to individuals rather than companies. And here’s why:

Advantages of Social Networking (to individuals):

• Instantaneous reach to wider masses – better than a press release. It enables individuals to get information to people who really matter to them.
  
• Create specific content geared towards it’s targeted audience.
  
• Revolutionizing information based industries.
  
• Puts more power in the hands of the consumer since they control the content.
  
• Gives consumers freedom to share & present opinions.
  
• This power in turn causes consumers to build trust on each other rather than institutions.

Disadvantages of Social Networking (to companies):

• Amount of time spent on social networking by employees affects productivity.
  
• Attacks the traditional hierarchy in an organization. Poses risk as it gives too much control to employees, steering away from the traditional power lying in the hands of management.

Clearly the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages in my opinion. Social Networking has the capability of revolutionizing the way a company operates but they are feared and not embraced easily. Social Networking can be beneficial to companies if they focus the resources and implement controls that filter out or minimize the risk of counterproductive elements of the behaviors.


In contrast the article Why Your Company Needs To Be On Facebook presents the opposite views. Here are some highlights of why Social Media is necessary to businesses.

• Fundament premise of all businesses is that they are social and personal to begin with.
  
• It’s about building bonds and relationships which is essentially networking.
  
• Business value of staying on top your network is priceless

But as this article points out there are certain problems at to why it isn’t taking off as much. Some of the reasons are

• Not enough people using social networking
  
• Business applications of social networking services are few.
  
• This is still in its infancy.

There’s big value to businesses using Social Networking. It lies in being able to connect to people using social networking sites. Advertisements on Social Networking won’t work but communicating with people lets you connect to your customers and there lies the true value in being able to connect quickly and build brand loyalty. It’s about extending relationships and Social Networking allows you to do so in real time.