Dr. Gail Ferreira
June 8, 2009
The ability to use social networking software to conduct business research is a necessary skill in today's collaborative business environment. Social networking software is based on contributions, the merit of the responses, and self-organization of resources. Three different software tools will be discussed briefly here with some tips for doing research.
DIGG
Users submit DIGG worthy content (include news stories, blogs, videos, and pictures. Member of the community rank content with votes. This can be used in a university setting to start discussions and rank participation based on merit scores from the group.
de.licio.us
de.licio.us is a Web site where you can create, shave, share all of your bookmarks. You can import/export existing bookmarks from your browser. The creation of a personal tag library allows you to organize articles and content in a manner that is relevant to your own personal research habits. You can also share your bookmarks and tags with other users by export/import.
You can interview participants in a study by sending out targeted surveys to user accounts on Twitter and attaching traditional tools such as SurveyMonkey. You can also have partipants in a study subscribe to groups such as Twibes (http://www.twibes.com, http://www.grouptweet.com) and share content. You can also track statistics and trends on Twitter and other social networking sites using selective search tools and techniques, some of which can be found at the following URL: http://mashable.com/2009/05/03/twitter-research-tools/
Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking value; companies create real when they combine technology with new ways of doing business (McKinsey, 2007). Education is a viable business that must embrace the new skill sets in order to accelerate growth. By learning to use tools during business research, students will be poised to enter the workplace with a new skill set that can be used to reinvent business methods.
2 comments:
When you say 'research' what types of analysis are you talking about? What levels of evidence do you expect in data gathering with these communities?
Hi Eric,
That is an excellent question! Any level of analysis is available based on how you link social networking software tools to other existing Web based software. You can gather evidence using the technologies, and then use existing defacto software methods for further analysis.
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