Social networking not a business

Posted by Andy Roberts on 21/3/08 • Categorized as General

Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business

Illustration by David Simonds

Nice illustration. Isn’t seesmic in one of those walled cells as well? Not sure whether Flickr belongs.

Steve Mills
March 27, 2008 • 4:48 am

Wow that picture really sums it up. It will be very interesting to see what direction the social networking phenomena takes as there are more of these networks created, and only so much attention of users to go around.

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- Andy Roberts
  March 27, 2008 • 9:05 am
  
  There have been several attempts at mashing together multiple apps to create a generic profile and ‘lifestream’ recently, my favourite of which is currently friendfeed.
  
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susan kuhn frost
January 22, 2009 • 3:20 pm

I agree: A tool never is a business.

A business is present when two parties exchange value at an agreed-upon price.

The are a lot of business people using social networking tools to generate more revenue for their businesses.

But you are so right that it doesn’t work the other way around.

It’s OK to give yourself time while you are learning the ropes. But give yourself a deadline at which you will answer these questions:

1. Have I met potential customers? How many?
2. Do I have a good process to convert them to actual customers? Has it worked?
3. What is the cost of my time spent on social networking?
4. If I am going to continue, what is a reasonable, achievable goal for my social networking activities?
5. How much time, if any, should I continue to invest to achieve that goal, given all my other business development activities?

Bottom Line: Start getting used to setting limits. That is a key component of “recession-proof thinking.” The days in which we could wait indefinitely for uncertain results — that is so 2008. Sigh….

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