An architecture for applying social networking to business

Social networking services that enhance communications at the personal level have recently proliferated to the point of explosive use. Individuals in all society and cultural settings naturally and routinely use Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs and social networking services such as Facebook or LinkedIn, for personal purposes. The penetration of these technologies into the popular culture has been pervasive and very successful and leads by far their use at the professional or business levels. These personal networking services are starting to penetrate the workplace and are being applied to business purposes, which have become a major concern to CIOs. Chief technology executives in organizations are hard pressed to be proactive and deploy these technologies to improve business processes, increase productivity and maintain business competiveness. The executives are also concerned in regulating the use of these services from a security and an IT governance perspective. In this paper we develop an architecture of social networking services applied to business purposes as well developed a process of analysis to help CIOs understand how to engineer the application of these technologies to their business environments in a rational manner and in a way that produces economic value while safeguarding security. The architecture of the social networking space applied to business needs consists of categorizing business communication modes based on the distinct characteristics of communication needs. To date we have identified four major modes of business use of these communication technologies: professional networking, professional communication, professional knowledge bases and professional collaboration. This paper will describe the resulting taxonomy and the attributes of the four basic groups. Major social networking service and tools in each of the four spaces are compared and rated against the characteristics of each business use mode and to each other. We will describe the process by which we assist the CIO in justifying, implementing and virally diffusing the necessary technologies once a need is identified. The diffusion process makes use of a unique process of identifying “killer uses” and “killer apps”. Additionally, considerations are presented to handle the important issue of security when using social networking tools for business purposes.