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Social networking has been riding a tidal wave on the Internet, and it has generated plenty of waves on corporate intranets, as well. But many managers are reluctant to fully take the plunge and invest in communication systems that seem like time wasters at best and security nightmares at worst. Does social networking offer benefits they're not seeing?

New School Teachings

It's all about the clash of vertical and horizontal, says Matthew Fraser, co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, a new book that explores social networking and business: vertical offices versus horizontal social networking. Businesses have a clear top-down hierarchy, while social networking resists authority and treats all ideas as equal. No wonder they clash.

Wikis are the easiest form of social networking for businesses to grasp, says Fraser. While they bring in horizontal collaboration, they can be managed by an administrator and they generally revolve around a certain task that needs to be accomplished. Since comments are directed and vetted, there's little room for freewheeling discussions.

But once you get beyond the safe experiments, there are plenty of businesses taking risks with new types of communication. Serena Software in California offers "Facebook Fridays" to its employees, Fraser notes. On Fridays, employees are offered two hours to have fun with their Facebook accounts and share information. That's the opposite of many financial companies and government agencies which have outright banned Facebook from their networks, he says.

A more common experiment is for multi-office or multi-national companies to embrace social networking as a way to allow distant locations to collaborate and share ideas. Some companies have Facebook accounts that only current employees can join. In a way, then, Facebook becomes the intranet, one with no infrastructure or costs to worry about.

Management Resistance

Not everyone is a social networking proponent. There have been several studies measuring lost productivity due to social networking. That's not collaboration, they conclude; that's just goofing off. Then there's the possibility of sensitive corporate information being leaked to outside readers.

Even when management is on-board with social networking, Fraser says, there's the possibility of sending the wrong message. Many companies offer a blog written by the CEO, such as the highly successful one by Jonathan Schwartz at Sun Microsystems.

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