Steamrollered into social networking
Jinfo Blog

11th November 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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As the venerable Dialog launches on Twitter, and Dow Jones announces a cunning new service for delivering warm leads to sales staff, there’s yet more evidence that social networking applications in business are reaching critical mass. In fact, a new survey from Palo Alto Networks talks of their use ‘exploding’ and ‘skyrocketing’. ‘Another step in a long tradition of building feedback channels with customers’ is how Libby Trudell of Dialog – doyen of online information services – speaks of its new Twitter site, Dialog LLC (http://twitter.com/DialogLLC). Actively inviting potential followers at the moment, it’s fair to say that Dialog’s new venture only dips a toe at this stage into the deep pool with many currents that is social networking (http://digbig.com/5bapyy). When it comes to exploiting social networking, the newest release of Dow Jones Companies & Executives is in a different league. The service works by seeking out triggers, or events that signal sales opportunity within a specific industry, such as management moves or product launches; once a sales professional receives a lead, DJ’s innovative ‘social selling’ tool taps into their social networks to identify warm introductions to target organisations (http://digbig.com/5baqaa). It’s well over 18 months since Dow Jones initially entered the business social networking market with the acquisition of Generate Inc (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e5788) and where it has moved many others may be expected to follow. But the journey may not be without its hazards. Palo Alto Networks’ latest Application Usage and Risk Report (details at http://digbig.com/5baqab) reveals that Twitter session use on enterprise networks has grown by more than 250% since its last survey in the spring and Facebook by 192%. There’s a 17-fold increase in the bandwidth consumed by Microsoft SharePoint, with blogging and wiki editing growing by a factor of 39 and total bandwidth consumed by these activities increasing by a factor of 48. Despite many enterprises’ attempts to block such applications, the rate at which they are making the crossover from personal to business use is happening faster than previous crossovers such as instant messaging, Palo Alto says. But it’s a firewall specialist – so of course it also seizes the opportunity of adding that the measurable business benefits of social networking can introduce business and security risks as well. Just as Twitter and LinkedIn’s new alliance reinforces Palo Alto’s assessment of the crossover from personal to business use (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e26788), so other recent reports support its finding that businesses are now being steamrollered inexorably into social networking applications with all their attendant hazards (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e26444). The trend has become just too great to ignore.

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