Over at Chronicles Beth has just shared a weblog post that I have enjoyed quite a lot, not only because of its message but also because of the scenario where it is coming from. The title of the weblog post is Centrality Journal and in it she is referencing another weblog around the topic of social networking, Centrality Journal, where she has found this gem: A YouTube (You have got to love YouTube!) video from The Daily’s Show on social networking sites.
The video itself is really worth while watching, I tell you. It will give you an idea as to why social networks are becoming more and more popular that they even make it on to the main stream media big time. However, what I really found interesting from the video itself is the actual parody itself. It clearly reminded me of what happened a few years ago when Instant Messaging first came out. Everyone thought that it was just meant to be for kids, their pastime to kill all of those idle hours. However, throughout the years IM has proven to be the killer application for instant, real-time collaboration not only amongst regular end-users but also amongst knowledge workers as a way of helping them become much more productive in such an on demand world as today’s. So much so that today in many companies it is considered a business critical application in order to get distributed teams together in a much more efficient way. And hardly anybody thinks that IM is just meant for kids any longer. Everyone is using one IM client or another, that is for sure.
So what it looked like was not going to make it into the real business world turned out to be one of its many key components. And by the looks of it I would think that we are now witnessing the exact same thing with Social Networking. And The Daily’s Show video on social networking sites is just another proof of that. Oh, we also have to remember that even if social networking could be considered one of the main options for our youth to hang out we have to remember that those same youngsters would be the ones ruling this world not too long into the distant future. So if they are making use of those social networks offerings and they are enjoying them quite a lot to get together with other people, then there is a great chance that they would be using them when they grow up. And, like a good friend of mine once said, no company would be able to ignore that fact, whether we like it or not. Social networks have been grabbing more and more focus from businesses but more specially by those who will not long from now will be our coworkers, managers, team leads, you name it. Thus are you ready ?
Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Knowledge Management, KM, Instant Messaging, IM
