Social Networking Sites In Business

To do social networking online has became very popular during the last few years. Nowadays people can chose among dozens of different social network sites for all kind of interest, e.g. for business use.

By using several other sources, Richard Longair has posted a good overview about the development of social networking sites. Longair is a UK-based blogger and got his Maters-degree in Electronic Commerce Technology from Aberdeen University. Summarized he states that social networking sites improved from simple text-based services (ICQ and Evite) in the mid 1990s to better equiped sites at the early 2000s (MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing). Longair also writes that we are now in a transitional stage to the next generation of social network sites.

Here you’ll find his thoughts in detail:

http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~fguerin/teaching/CS5038/assessment/essays_from_2006/groupC/Future%20of%20Social%20Networking.html


While searching for information about the impact of social networking sites on business, I have found a interesting article in BusinessWeek. This article caught my attention because it raises the question about the usefulness of social networking sites in business

The article was written by Karen E. Klein, a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues, and was published by BusinessWeek on August 6, 2008. Klein states that social network sites can be useful, if the user is aware what goals should be achieved with these sites. The articles includes examples from businesses where the use of social network sites created benefit for the company. At the end of the article Klein also decribes one of the most important advantages of social network sites form my point of view: the impact on search engine optimization (SEO).

Follow the link to read more details:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2008/sb2008086_346094.htm