Kris Dunn’s HR Capitalist blog is normally pretty spot-on. But his idea of experimenting with a social network for his company is cute but dumb, like when puppies try to run and keep falling over. From his blog:
Social Networking (think products like FaceBook and MySpace) should have positive impact inside a company. Linking employees to other teammates they’ve never met, sharing thoughts, interests and news inside a social network sounds cool. Surely that translates to increased satisfaction, retention and even engagement - right?
We’ll see….
Here’s how the project will work. We’re going to launch a social network inside our company, including the ability to set up your own home page, a blog hosted by me with multiple contributors, youtube video capablity, widget functionality, etc.
Internal social networks are silly for a number of reasons. But let’s look at Dunn’s stated goal – increased employee communication leading to increased satisfaction, retention, and even (fingers crossed!) engagement — and why a social network will fall flatter than a skateboarding soccer mom:
- Communication via social networks is inefficient. Recently, a friend from college got in touch with me about doing some freelance work. We’d lost touch, and he found me via Facebook. Fantastic, right? But as soon as I got his initial message, we moved our conversation over to email. Why? Because it’s one less step to communicate, allowed us to bring other people in on the conversation easily, and to pass documents back and forth with greater ease.
- Social networks lose engagement over time. People get bored with social networks. It happened to Friendster, it’s happening to MySpace, and will happen to Facebook. People like the initial rush of collecting friends like baseball cards, but once their social network is established, user engagement drops off unless a steady stream of content is provided. A company social network probably won’t offer online Scrabble to add stickiness, and so is doomed to become a depressing virtual ghost town.
- Social networks are, well, social. During the heyday of MySpace, the most interesting part of a person’s profile was their Top 8 Friends, a quick way to see who liked whom the most. Social networks are about selective connection, but a work environment can’t be. While a social network would ideally break employees out of their normal silos, social networking is all about digitally cementing the connections you already have, not establishing new ones.
There are some Web 2.0 clichés that work great for companies – wikis and internal blogs can and do offer benefits, particularly for larger organizations – but social networking, at least how we think of social networking right now, isn’t one of them.
(Picture of a very unsafe clothes dryer via flickr user camcoc, C.C. 2.0)
