Corporate Social Networks / Business Week

The Water Cooler Is Now on the Web: With a nod to Facebook, large companies are starting in-house social networks / 2007-01-01 / Business Week / pp.78-79

Statistics

• Share of employees at large companies who say they contribute regularly to blogs, social networks, wikis and other Web 2.0 Services = 20%
• Number of professionals on LinkedIn = 13 million
• Starcom MediaVest Group’s internal network = SMG Connected
• Number of SMG Connected Users = 2,060 = 1/3 of the comapny's workers
• Number of Ernst & Young (Google) workers with Facebook accounts = 11,000
• Number of users on KPMG Alumni network = 10,000 former and current employees
• KPMG (Google) credits 14% of total hires to their alumni network
• Estimated time saved by the Film Foundation (Google) to create educational materials for schools = 50%

Benefits of social networks

• Efficient way to mine for in-house expertise
• Discover new recruits
• Share information within businesses' own walls
• Reduce time spent mailing documents and e-mailing comments

The Fear of being open

• CIOs from large companies, especially financial institutions such as Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH), block employee access to public social networks for fear of losing control of information in response to the “open” ethos of the social Net
• Accounting firms ensure members don't provide tax or accounting advice through their networks in order to comply to regulatory / disclosure issues
• Awareness tracks network posts and sends potentially inflammatory words into “moderation boxes” to be reviewed by a manager.

Corporate Social Network Platforms

• introNetworks (Google)
• Jive Software (Google)
• IBM Lotus Connections (Google)
• Microsoft SharePoint (Google)
• SelectMinds (Google)

Read the full article on BusinessWeek.com: The Water Cooler Is Now on the Web: With a nod to Facebook, large companies are starting in-house social networks / 2007-01-01 / BusinessWeek.com

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