24 Cahiers de la documentation – Bladen voor documentatie - 2009/3 SOCIAL NETWORKING AS A BUSINESS INFORMATION TOOL Arthur WEISS Managing Partner, Aware  De laatste jaren kwam er een groei in het aantal websites die er pertinent toe bijdragen dat netwerking tussen individuen vereenvoudigt. Alhoewel de meest gekende zoals MySpace en Facebook vooral gebruikt worden door een meer doorsnee Internetgebruiker, bestaan er eveneens sites die eerder zakelijke doelstellingen hebben, deze commerciële netwerking ondersteunen en daarnaast een waaier van zakelijke informatie aanbieden. Denken we bij dit laatste onder meer maar aan het zoeken naar competitive intelligence, het mogelijk gebruik voor head hunting of voor het vinden van expertise. Niettegenstaande potentiële inbreuken op de privacy zijn steeds meer individuen bereid om gedetailleerde informatie over hun profiel op het net te plaatsen wat deze sociale netwerking als business tool in de hand werkt.  La visibilité des sites Web dédiés aux relations entre les individus (les réseaux sociaux) s’est fortement accrue ces dernières années. Bien que les plus connus de ces sites – MySpace et Facebook – soient à l’origine simplement destinés à des échanges grand public, certains d’entre eux ont un but commercial et peuvent servir à des relations d’affaires et à différentes applications commerciales, telles que l’intelligence économique, la chasse aux cadres ou la recherche d’expertises. Le souci pour certains de proposer une information détaillée sur leur profil a facilité cette évolution, malgré les risques d’intrusion dans leur vie privée. en years ago, the traditional ways of staying in touch with business colleagues differed little from the generation before. Although technologies such as email and fax had replaced telex, when it came to group contacts, off-line networking on the golf green, at post-conference parties or at various other business events were dominant. People kept in touch via address books, email and Rolodexes. In the 1980s, the Filofax was a key tool to keep in touch with all one’s contacts – “let’s do lunch” was the way to keep in touch with what friends and colleagues were up to. Social networks were essentially national or industrial – you knew the people in your own company, some from your industry (generally ex- colleagues or people met at meetings) and very few if any from other geographies. In order to find somebody outside your network meant a laborious process of “asking around” – “Does anybody know somebody who…”. Online, there were special interest groups and discussion forums, and also chat rooms, where people could converse online. However the idea of networking as a group of people linked together via a website, rather than around a shared interest did not exist. This has now changed completely, and the implications for business information professionals are significant. Ten years ago, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing would have meant nothing, yet today they are frequently mentioned in news reports and in the general media. According to New Scientist 1 currently 690 million people globally use social networks – slightly over 10% of all people alive today (based on US Census Bureau estimates 2 which give 6.77 billion people for July 2009). It would be a mistake to view such sites as having only importance for end-consumers and not for businesses. The importance of social networking sites for business users in a variety of areas cannot be ignored. Apart from the obvious advertising and marketing applications, which provide a new channel to reach potential customers, there are now numerous business applications for these tools – for research, recruitment, sales, and of course business networking. Social networking tools A current definition of a social networking site is a website that offers a way for people to interact with each other online – via news, chats, instant messaging, etc., thereby creating a community of people linked to each other by friendship or common interest. These connections can be based on off-line as well as solely online connections, but crucially allow for connections to a group where one person can connect to others based on their own connections. Usually, membership of a social networking site requires that the new member creates a profile so that other people can find them. The first site allowing people to interconnect based on a common interest was classmates.com, launched in 1995. Initially it wasn’t possible to list friends and the site was aimed at allowing people who had shared high- school or college to reconnect. The most T