Five Tips for Social Networking, with John Hagel & John Seely Brown

conversationsIn Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking in their Big Shift Harvard Business Review blog, John Hagel III and John Seely Brown offer solid advice for executives who want to get traction with social networks, some of which might surprise you. It’s valuable for executives from individual and company perspectives. Here’s the post, and here’s my response, which builds and extends some of their points:

John2, thanks for very solid advice all around. However, I totally agree with @cole, to be most productive as an individual or an enterprise, you must have an explicit strategy. An enterprise is an orchestra, so defining key goals and techniques, without dictating, is critical for success. This includes giving guidance and space for employees to pursue their personal branding, by resonating with the enterprise.

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Comparing Launch-to-Year6 Revenue: Google, Facebook, Yahoo

Comparing Launch-to-Year6 Revenue: Google, Facebook, YahooIn Allfacebook, Nick O’Neill presents a chart that compares the first six years’ revenue for Yahoo!, Google and Facebook. Even though some of these exercises are coffee-cooler talk without much substance, this one afforded the opportunity to think about how Facebook and Google add value.

According to BusinessInsider’s interpretation, neither Google nor Facebook emphasized revenue in the early years and hockey-sticked later. Here’s the article, and here are my thoughts on all three players:

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You Know Facebook Connect, but why not LinkedIn Connect?

You Know Facebook Connect but why not LinkedIn Connect?You Know Facebook Connect but why not LinkedIn Connect? discusses credentialing across websites in the Web 3.0 version of single signon.

Shannon Clark, on his Slow Brand blog, presents the idea of a LinkedIn Connect, which would enable users to authenticate and share certain approved information from their LinkedIn presence on third-party sites. He writes, “Why isn’t LinkedIn looking to be the Identity layer for not just a few applications running inside of LinkedIn or a very small handful of LinkedIn Partners, but instead to offer a strong, business focused identity layer for 1000?s of business applications across the Internet?” Great question that merited some cycles.

Here’s the post, with my thoughts below. A good thread with some technical discussion, but understandable for non-techies, too.

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Facebook vs. Twitter Influence on Techcrunch

Facebook vs. Twitter Influence on TechcrunchPersonally and professionally, I find posts that “compare” Twitter and Facebook as if they were competitors largely off-base and useless, but I weighed in on this one on Techcrunch. My thesis is that these venues only “compete” if you care about fickle mass adoption and don’t care about each site’s underlying value proposition. Facebook and Twitter are very different, so comparing them doesn’t make much sense in most cases. In 2009, however, mass media in the United States especially was having a field day talking about Twitter “knocking Facebook off its pedestal,” which was silly. Here’s Techcrunch’s take on it. My response and thoughts are below.

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