The Facebook Factor

You’ve read all the articles from “you must use social networks to get an edge and stay connected” to the other extreme, “Facebook Fatigue… what a waste of my time!”, but what impact do social networks really have in the world of business? Friends and colleagues tell you that you “must” join applications like Linkedin, Kuhnektid and Google Friends and have profiles built on MySpace or FaceBook and you think to yourself why?

You’re are a serious developer, not a college kid, you don’t need an avatar, and besides your organization has all the tools you need to communicate. You have products like Outlook for email and scheduling, collaboration tools like Sharepoint, Jetspeed and Liferay, heck your ERP provider has a portal for communication and who hasn’t had an intranet and video conferencing since the 1980’s. Need to stay connected to suppliers and vendors? Not a problem, you use your CRM.

It’s true that the social networking sites don’t have any industrial strength business applications or security. It’s also true that corporate America doesn’t have the flash and glitz of the social networking sites. What is inevitable is that both will improve, so you better be prepared.

If you’re an organization hiring recent college graduates, you better be prepared for pressure from them to have tools available that they have been using for years. These new hires have groups for friends and every possible interest. How many of these sites already have groups about your company formed by current or expatriates of your organization? They are looking for quick communication like instant messaging (with avatars and emotions) from a portal that has their profile or blog. They are not jaded yet (or maybe just coddled) and still think people care what they think! However, you’re looking at it as a security risk because of the lack of enterprise level protection. Your first reaction is to block such sites and ignore them as they fall low on the priority list behind the day-to-day deliverables. Your new hires first reaction is to say “I’m out of here” or more likely “cul8tr”. They will be off to a more nimble, entrepreneurial environment while you wait for your vendor to release a version of their software with the functionality provided by social networks.

But you’re a developer. Tools are tools and you use them when and where they fit. Have you taken a step back and thought, “What tools were used to develop these sites?” What is the underlying technology of social networking and massive multiple player (MMP) sites? If this train in coming down the tracks, do I want to get involved or stay on the bench in the station? What skills do I need? Are my current skills going the way of Y2K COBOL conversions? Yes, old school development languages like C++ are still used in some sites (to build 3D engines), but the majority of skills required are object oriented tools such as Java with Swing, Ajax, PHP, XUL, Perl and Python, and Ruby on Rails.

Are you ready? Is your staff ready? Is your organization ready?

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