New York, 10th August 2008
There is a lot of debate in the press these days, both digitally and in print, about Social Networking. The debate is about its usefulness and what it actually does for people. Frequently there is another mention that people are getting fed up already with Facebook, or LinkedIN. So as entrepreneurs – should this be part of your life? Should you spend your precious time on being active on Social Networks? The answer is "Yes – but….." If it was anything else, it wouldn’t be much fun writing about, now would it?
We came to found the E.Factor as part of an evolution we went through ourselves. First of all ofcourse the technology has changed over the past decade and a half, which is why it is now even possible to use the internet in this totally new way. But is more then that – Social Networks would not have existed in the social environment of say 30 years ago, or even 20 years ago. That has to do with the behaviour of the users and how that has evolved over the past years and led to a distinct change in the way people work. Ofcourse it’s always very difficult to pinpoint what the starting point was. To me, there were a number of things that started and have converged to form a new attitude towards openness and willigness to create an "online presence". Homeworking is one of these things, access to computers ofcourse another coupled with the rise of email, and technology that allows you to "chat" plays a major role also. The result of all these things (and I could name many more) is that particular the younger generations are very easy about sharing personal data online with others. And not just others in the sense of their friends or contacts, but also others that they have never met. I always classify this as the "who to meet – reversal". Whereas one used to meet with people and then based on that meeting decided whether to have anything further to do with that person, nowadays people meet online first of all, and then based on that experience decide whether to create time in their diaries to meet in person. It is a total shift. And this has a lot of implications for Entrepreneurs too.
It means that you cannot pretend Social Networks do not exist, or are there just for fun. Or shy away from being online at all. If you look at history – most of the things that started for "fun" only – will later have had a serious impact on the way we do business. Take postal pigeons – they enabled early day traders to utilize arbitrage opportunities between the New York and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges (this is how Reuters got started!), then came telex, fax, computers and even games – all things that seemed to be hobbies first of all, and were at some point probably called "toys" by someone who really did not see the longer term vision but then evolved and got incorporated into daily (business) lifes at breakneck speed.
Social Networks are no different. Whilst playing around on Facebook may not be the thing that leads you to a great breakthrough, or find you the perfect partner in another geography with whom to do busines….but if you start seeing the new niche Social Networks such as our own, then you see that being online, having a presence for your business online, will allow you to move along with the times and be part of the new way of doing business. I am not preaching that you should all join every single network out there that you can. Like with all business decisions, you will need to make choices. There are very few right now (bar E.Factor ofcourse!) that are actually focused on Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and I do believe that a network needs to offer MORE then merely the ability to find a name or chat with someone. It has to make sense for your business, not merely be something to play with. But cutting your teeth by trying a few is definitely worthwhile – it’ll help you sharpen your act when you find the one that you really think offers you the value you need from it.
With regards to Social Networks therefore – it is not a question of whether you as an Entrepreneur should spend time on building your profile, the question should be whether you can afford not to.