Studio – Business Impacts of Social Networking

My reflective response on the “Business Impact of Social Networking “…

I found this article to be quite useful to me as a web designer because although I knew a lot about social networking in more of its’ executions – being a part of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. and especially with my current projects that seem to be centered around some type of social networking. – the article gave me a broader outlook on exactly how much social networking is effecting business practices.

It always seems that people have wanted to work from anywhere, right? No one ever really wants to go into work. They would rather conduct as much business as possible from their own home and only have to deal with the important things outside of from time to time. As it seems to be heading that way, social networking being used as a tool to increase overall business connectivity and communication and allowing employees to be mobile and conduct business from just about anywhere that would be convenient to the employee, the client, and the business. By practically bringing everyone to the same “page” or level of understand of what is going on within the company, we see a business where communication is key and can be referred to as needed.

Also, eveyone has their opinions and needs – for employees social networking gives them the opportunity to express their opinions, solutions, etc. that could benefit the company; as well, for customers it allows them to view what progress a business is making and therefore institute their needs as a consumer and in turn creating a level of inovation in the products for the business.

For those reasons, a business may see an increase in over all revenue because they will be more visible and accessible to its market because they would have an expansion of “‘reach,” marketing and advertising can become more dynamic, the costumer experience can be increased through “personalizing” their service needs with the company, as well as allow a business to find and address new markets.

Although there are a few challenges that social networking in business will have to face, the over all impacts do seem that they will or better yet…have made a significant impact and change in how we will communicate. As a web developer, I think I am starting to understand the idea of cloud computing a little more because of this article. If this, social networking, is the structure for such a thing as cloud computing, then I am more likely to accept the uses of such a concept.

In a new age of “change” – as the theme of this year seems to be going – we are starting to see a more “transparent” view of those things that we are involved with on a day-t0-day basis. By this, I agree that businesses will need to be ready to loose total control over their image, both to their employees and the public.

The outlook for myself a web designer, this could make a convincing argument for a different approach or more dynamic structure in design. To be able to allow and control things that are necessary, will prove to be a challenging aspect. Though, the road to inovation, as proven by track record, only seems to be limited to our imagination.