Via Techcrunch and Inside Facebook, it looks like Facebook is rolling out its services to corporate markets. Microsoft, Apple, Accenture and PWC are a few of the dozen or so companies Facebook is supporting at present. Smart move. Why?
- These companies generally hire the early-adopting, SNC-aware demographic that feeds Facebook’s college advocates.
- The culture of these corporations closely mimics a college experience. People move around alot, change assignments frequently, and require wide project-based collaboration. Facebook is human knowledge management in these contexts.
- They are big corporations. A few years ago, you were supposed to eat lunch with someone new every day. Smart managers will realize that SNC-based sharing is actually beneficial to group cohesion and personnel management. People will be able to place faces to names, they’ll know stuff about the people their meeting, it will break down barriers for communication. Corporations, frankly, should be thanking the Facebook.
So it’s all roses, right? No. Don’t expect corporations to be completely comfortable with this rollout.
- Corporations will primarily fear the same stuff college administrators fear – that Facebooking employees will make bad choices that will require disciplinary intervention. In the corporate world, the stakes are much higher – but I think we’re foolish to think the majority of students don’t realize this. Plus, with a few years experience on Facebook or MySpace, students will have a level of familiarity with the systems that helps them stay away from bad decisions. This is not to say that this won’t be an issue for corporations, just that it won’t be as big an issue as they expect.
- Corporations will secondarily fear the information employees put into the Facebook. Meeting calendars, person-to-person messages, wall postings, event schedules: On campus, no one really cares to own this data. In the corporate world, this data is clearly owned by the corporation. I’d expect at least one of these companies to block Facebook.com for these reasons.
- Then there’s the other objections: Workers will waste time on the Facebook (Any hiring manager that has suffered from a Facebook addiction will be a hard sell that Facebook doesn’t promote the wasting of time), corporate Facebooks will be used for dating, information will be retransmitted out of the Facebook, etc. All of these are valid in my opinion.
Corporate Facebooks aren’t new. Google’s got one, and its common practice to have paper versions at lots of companies. Corporate Facebooks make sense – they serve a real, situationally relevant information need. And as long as Facebook keeps its concentration on their feeder program (new college students), they’ll have a steady stream of willing corporate Facebook users in the future.
Tags: facebook
