The underlying capabilities and drivers behind the most successful social networks can and should have the same impact in business communication and performance. As such, there is a remarkable opportunity for businesses to begin to attack the current social media gap and incorporate many of the key social media capabilities into their business tools, technologies, and networks. Social networks such as Facebook present a very real opportunity to leverage the connective capabilities of social media in a business context.
Key Attributes of a Social Network
With more than 1.35 billion users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. The average Facebook user has 338 friends (in a personal network) and creates 90 different pieces of content each month. Most content pieces are personal facts and updates or comments made about someone else’s facts and updates. The addictive nature of Facebook is driven by an ability to see and share real-time updates with a member’s entire personal network, without the need for direct and time-consuming one-to-one interactions.
Facebook continues to grow rapidly each month and, as it does, it continues to offer one of the best examples of the “network effect”—the situation where the value to each current member of a network grows with the addition of every new member. More people log on to Facebook because more people are logging on to Facebook. The ease in which sharing content, communicating, and interacting with members of network is possible, the one-to-many publishing capability, and the ability to organize groups around relationships and common interests are but a few of the many compelling attributes of Facebook. Facebook’s Web 2.0 platform enables it to offer a host of value-added services that are designed to help its members get more while within the network, like auto-generated suggestions and recommendations based upon user activity and helps its members get more beyond the network by enabling linkages and interoperability with a host of other media sites and services.
Value in a B2B Context
While no P2P network comes close to matching the size of Facebook, like the larger social networks, the different supplier and payment (or “P2P”) networks that operate today leverage a common infrastructure to provide value to its members. And, while many have begun to provide a host of value-added services that help their members get more from the network, the primary value delivered to their members today is transactional in nature. The larger near-term opportunities for the different P2P networks is to incorporate the social network/media attributes that will help their members better identify new partners and more quickly establish relationships with them. By utilizing social media features to help strengthen trading partner relationships and by incorporating external information and services that draw more and more participants to their networks, the providers have a great opportunity to provide a transactional platform that is also a dynamic communication and collaborative hub.
B2B Use Case: The Collaborative Business/P2P Network: By leveraging and/or improving existing P2P network capabilities and layering in different attributes of social networks and media, in particular, the ease of access (i.e., joining or connecting) and the ability to communicate and share rich content, network members will be better able to identify new partners and strengthen the relationships that they have with current ones. As the partnerships develop and advance within the new network or platform structure, the partners will begin to directly leverage the network infrastructure to share ideas, engage and interact, and execute collaborative projects.
Final Thoughts
Facebook on its face is a clear example of the power inherent in networks. More people log onto Facebook because more people are logging onto Facebook, which allows for exponential growth the more prevalent the network becomes. This same theory applies in the B2B context, and when the network affect is applied to the procure-to-pay process, network effects can improve the P2P workflow through initiating new relationships and simplifying commerce.
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