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Monday, April 24, 2006

Business social networking

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Visible Path is taking a somewhat different approach to social networking. Armed with several million dollars in venture capital (including $10 million from Menlo Ventures and $5 million from Kleiner Perkins), the company is less interested in the six-degrees approach employed by LinkedIn and more interested in what can be gleaned from communications in which you’ve already engaged. According to a two-minute Flash animation on the Visible Path website that explains the concept, the software analyzes email, instant messages, and other communications you’ve sent and received to map the strengths of your relationships (all, apparently, without actually reading the content of those messages; the company stresses respect for privacy).

By mapping those relationshyips, Visible Path claims it can help employees connect with others with whom they want to do business, such as a sales rep looking for an entree into a prospective customer. Visible Path sees corporations as its customer base rather than individuals, which is the model for LinkedIn and most other social networking ventures.

I’m curious to see how many corporations buy into the online social networking concept. Individual employees who understand the value of social networks are accruing benefits not only to themselves (while job-hunting, for example, one of the main activities on LinkedIn), but also to their companies as they establish new connections. But as a corporate purchase, I’m a bit skeptical that those in the position to authorize a corporate expense will truly comprehend what social networking can do for an organization. I suspect some smaller, more nimble companies with younger, tech-savvy leaders may sign on, but I’ll be surprised if many of the Fortune 1000 make the same commitment. I hope I’m wrong, though, and I wish Visible Path all the best.

What disappoints me is that Visible Path isn’t what I thought it was when I first read a brief description that alluded to “enterprise” social networking. To me, that means within the organization. I am convinced that there is tremendous potential in an all-internal social networking platform for large organizations that lets employees get knowledge and information, and make connections, among themselves. While there social networks can certainly coalesce around blogs, wikis, and other social media tools applied internally, I’d still like to see the LinkedIn or Visible Path concept applied to organizational knowledge management and communication efforts.