Social networking in 2030… or 2015?

I seem to be spending more time finding information about past events or reading publications that are two or more years old. One example is learning what the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders had to say about the future of social networking by 2030. Here are three of their expectations:

• Networks that reach accross sectors, value-chains and national borders will be standard by 2030
• Markedly different company structures and forms of cooperation are likely
• About one-third of people in work will spend more than 10 hours per week online.

I wonder what the participants would say now? I’d bet they would bring forward their expectations a few years. Here in Australia some are saying that we are poised now for a period of accelerated development in social networking in the corporate sector. I’d agree with that. Whatever else that has contributed to the rapid rise in social networking over the last two years, the need to create value in the present economic environment is going to be another driver in the use of social networking. In the Foreword to Networked Citizens, Robert Ainger said that the value of networking in an economic downturn could “mean the difference between a business collapsing or capitalising”. I do so agree with that – there is a lot of doom and gloom about and not enough attention on opportunities. Leveraging social networking is an opportunity.

Institutional failure has taken a well deserved hiding recently. The widespread reduction in trust of financial institutions has been a value-destructive force of huge proportions. But then declining respect for institutions in the public and private sectors has been evident for some time now.

Now here is the twist. Trust has been a driver in the rise of social networking. In thinking about the work, people are increasingly reliant on their social network for ideas, to solve problems and to seek career opportunities. Social networkers look to each other to play games and to socialise or find out what hot (eating out, entertainment, the latest gadgets or where to go on vacation and so on). There is a lot of trust building up through online activities.

When an organisation hires a social networker, they actually take on more than an employee. I would be surprised if who a person networks with is not already integral to some employment decisions. Social networks of consumers are factors in a firms value-chain. Social networks are channels in the democratic process.

So trust in social networks is of considerable and growing social and economic importance. But how durable is that trust. Institutions and individuals have substantive legal and commercial frameworks in place to support their rights and obligations. What of social networks…particularly distributed social networks? Now that, I feel is a Big Issue…or soon will be.

Flexible organisation

Bob Johansen’s Get There Early is a very good read. Johansen’s message is that taking a long-term view helps make sense of the present, out of which comes learning how to act.  There is much in the book to take in. The main trust of this posting though is in reference to Chapter 9 Flexing and Flexibility. Using connections within social networks – inside and outside of organisational boundaries – provides flex and response to change.

There is growing awareness about how innovation and value is created by moving from hierarchies to collaborative, autonomous networks. Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, in  Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything, say that online collaboration “can be mobilised to accomplish much more than one firm acting alone”. In
the digital economy, access to knowledge – within as well as beyond the firm – drives innovation and new value.

Mark Pesce has blogged about Web-enabled connectivity creating opportunities for people to develop new behaviour and techniques, and where these are successful, to have them disseminated widely and quickly.

Dave Morgan has bogged about the possible emergence of ‘people networks’ through the development of OpenSocial- a set of common APIs for interoperable social communication between social network sites and other web sites. Morgan suggests that while social networking would be distributed, organisation would be possible but largely through people networks.

It does not take long to realise that decisions about the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services could transfer to people networks. Seems to me that Facebook, Bebo and Google all realise that – and are getting there early. Those that are building large virtual connections between staff (such as IBM’s presence on Facebook) realise that, and are getting there early.