Over the last 10 years the Internet has changed our lives forever - both from a social and business perspective. Currently we are in a phase which the experts call - Web 2.0 which provides us with a whole new set of cool tools that take us way beyond ordinary web browsing, searching and publishing of web sites. These new Web 2.0 tools take the Internet to a whole new level allowing almost any individual to actively participate, interact and create content on the web with little or no technical expertise or cost to them.

With any new and emerging market comes confusion and chaos. Web 2.0 is no different as there are over 250 different web 2.0 tools available on the market today. But, there is one web 2.0 application that is quickly emerging as the next " Killer App" - online social networking. Over 250 million people today belong to one or more online social network. Make no wonder why the business community is starting to take notice.

So what business value does online social networking offer to corporations?

Before I try and answer this question, I would like to point out that social networking is not a new concept to business. We as business people have been using social networking as a business tool for decades, long before anyone had ever heard of Facebook. The only difference is in the tools we have been using; telephone calls, face to face meetings, water cooler conversations and of course email. With over 90 billion messages being sent a day, email is by far the #1 social networking tool in the world.

The problem is that email is a very poor social networking tool and our dependency on email has become a huge problem for most companies.

• Did you know that on average, a knowledge worker wastes almost 20% of their day responding, managing, organizing their email in box?
• Did you realize that your personal inbox is a just a huge knowledge silo, filled with vital corporate knowledge which cannot be accessed or reused by others in the company?
• Do you worry about highly confidential information leaving your company through unauthorized email messages and attachments?
  

This has resulted in companies still struggling with isolated knowledge workers; limited understanding of organizational expertise; and a coping with vital corporate knowledge being trapped in information silos like email inboxes. These barriers hamper productivity, decrease employee awareness and cripple the pace of innovation by duplicating efforts.

Many companies are starting to look to and use web 2.0 social networking tools as an alternative to email. They are using web 2.0 social networking tools to help connect people (distributed teams, mobile workforce, across time zones); information (structured and unstructured); and processes (policies, procedures, best practices, rules, regulations) across their entire organization - big or small -  inside and out.

At IGLOO, we are seeing two emerging " usage trends" for social networking within the business community - workforce and marketplace corporate social networking (CSN). Workforce CSN (inside the firewall) is all about creating "team driven" corporate social networks that connect employees to the people, information and processes they need in order to get their jobs done effectively and efficiently. Workforce CSN (outside the firewall) on the other hand is about extending social networking beyond the corporate firewall to connect with your partners, customers and suppliers to create deeper, stronger & more trusted relationships.

I think it's way  too early in the game to have any concrete measures with respect to the potential ROI of corporate social networking tools. But, I think the former CEO of HP sums it up well with this statement:

"If HP knew, what HP knows, we would be 300% more productive."