Our Facebook Groups in Business, peer-to-peer action research initiative, emerged from conversations with fellow conveners, blogging partner Victoria G. Axelrod and colleague William L. Anderson, through the summer of 2007.
By December 2007 an extraordinary group of entrepreneurial and generous Facebook Group owners, willing to give their limited time but masses of talent, had assembled to investigate our starting premise:
“Facebook may, but also may not, become THE enterprise social networking platform, but it's here, use is growing, so we need to understand the phenomenon and learn from it.”
Jenni Beattie, Ray Cha, Dave Duarte, Eric Edelstein, Francois Gossieaux, Adam Kovitz, Niki Lambropoulos, Kimberly Samaha: THANK YOU ALL.
We were also fortunate, and appreciative, of the volunteer contributions of an equally talented group of advisors on study design and analysis:
Patti Anklam, Jill Howell, Jeffrey Keefer, Josh Katinger, Danielle Ravich
Our first findings were presented to the University of Warwick's Knowledge Innovation Workshop's March 4, Northampton meeting. While just a start at revealing our learning, the slides are posted here. Hopefully too our experience will serve as seeds for others to build on. It's clear there's a multitude of opportunities to better understand how Facebook and net working can create value for businesses.
Essential Lessons
Reflecting on our FGIBI experience the following stand out for me:
1. Open Research: Joy and Work
The slides do not necessarily reveal the joy of being part of the Facebook Groups in Business Investigation. Of course the effort was greater than I suspect any of us imagined. FGIBI was an entirely volunteer initiative that engaged remarkable and very busy people with whom it was a privilege collaborating.
One of my learnings was about facilitating such an open research project. Now I have even greater respect for what is accomplished through open source software development.
2. The Power to Convene that Facebook Provides
Through Facebook and email communications we engaged owners of 9 Facebook Groups from 6 countries and 4 continents. (Our 21st Century Organization Facebook Group was the 10th participant.)
Only one group owner was known face-to-face before FGIBI began.
To me this capacity to connect is both attention getting and powerful.
3. Extreme Talent and Sense of Adventure
Everyone of our Facebook Group owners is an extraordinary talent in their own fields and I would say, visionary. That they were willing to join 3 unknown conveners in a volunteer project testifies to their adventurousness.
4. Energy, Structure and Audience Relevance
For me slide 10 in our presentation, (assembled in the pre-dawn hours before the KIN presentation) is the most interesting because both of what it promises, and what is not revealed.
The numbers in no way tell the story of the relative levels of energy and initiatives that drove, or not, activity in each Facebook Group. We tried to track steps owners were taking to impact activity levels but my observations are anecdote based.
Many factors played into group activity levels and growth rates. These included effort and initiatives by the owners, other marketing initiatives undertaken at the same time in the business, and simply relevance of the group interest area to Facebook members generating viral growth. Clearly whether a Facebook Group is closed and private, for example for use within an organization, or open to all is significant for the growth trajectory and value proposition too.
5. Facebook Conceals Understanding Wherein It's Power Lies
The conveners' conversations that inspired FGIBI were about network effects. Victoria and I were immersed in studying network laws for our Connecting Intelligence article last May when Facebook opened their platform to developers and usage took off. (See Alexa graph, slide 7.) Our interest quickly jumped to wondering how network effects operate in Facebook, or not, in the context of Valdis Kreb's instruction:
"You do realize that Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks"
Hence our ambition in gathering Facebook Group data included tracking the ties between Group members. For example, when new people come how are they connected to existing members? Do they know the owner and/or another member, or are they unknown?
Practically tie data was impossible to gather especially for larger groups. Only Kimberly Samaha persevered in gathering this information, but manually, as Facebook provided no tool for doing so.
6. The Magic of Emergence
When first announcing FGIBI"s ambitions we had no idea if anyone would respond, and if they did, who might be interested. In fact, the variety and serious business intent of the Facebook Group owners who joined our investigation, and the positive experience working with them, was more than I could have planned.
Further, simultaneously two of our Facebook Group owners, Kimberly Samaha and Niki Lambropoulos undertook interesting, independent Facebook research in addition to their contributions to our initiative. Their studies are represented in the slides.
In addition our new found connection to Kimberly Samaha through FGIBI lead to featuring her Bordeaux Colloquium as an innovation open network model in an Inside Knowledge article Victoria Axelrod and I were writing.
7. Facebook's Holes Limit Potential Use as an Enterprise Wide Net Working Platform
When data gathering began last December media stories aplenty described how adding data to Facebook is a snap, but removing it from Facebook servers is not. Privacy and security concerns abound.
Regularly using Facebook also revealed the gaps in the administrative tools, especially no granularity to display content to a members of a particular Facebook Group, or subset of Facebook Friends.
It is no surprize then seeing the emergence of networking platforms designed for the enterprise by addressing privacy and security concerns, and integrating with existing knowledge sharing and technology systems.
My March 6 presentation closed asking the question:
What is the future of social networking in the enterprise?
At minimum I hope our first findings provide fuel to the conversation. Opportunities to address questions and discuss our experience are welcomed.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
