Bad Mix: Traditional businesses and Social media

I recently did a road map of social media initiatives within the department and agency I work for. I tracked all of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policies from the 1970 (Hello President Carter!) to the present time and them mapped them to specific Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) policies and initiatives. I also captured when various Social media businesses like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Blogger were formed or purchased by Google. It was a fascinating exercise.

The evolution of businesses, which are based on the concepts of social networking, and organic growth, has truly been disruptive in the business world. The tools provided by these companies are making the Jasmine flower proud (my poor attempt in weaving the political revolutions in the middle east into this blog entry). Unfortunately I don't think social media tools are going to successful in the big business world because businesses are based on the principles of organized management. There is a reason why fortune 500 companies hire executives with a Masters of Business ADMINISTRATION and not Masters of Science in Business. Structure and management go together.

If you think about it. Labor unions and other user related groups with a common goal (that are not dependent on a process) will adopt social media successfully within their organization. Meanwhile investment banks and large supply chain companies will have limited success because they are based on processes. IT is critical in a business they automate business process and automation of business processes can be managed. Social media shouldn't be managed but it should be organic. A successful CIO may be able to successful implement social media in niche pockets but he or she cannot make it an enterprise level shared services. Folks in the Department of Defense claim that social media is successful in their organization. When you do intelligence analysis which is based on information sharing from different perspectives then there has be collaboration. Social media in the intelligence domain is successful because it is based on information collaboration. This is uniquely different from a typical fortune 500 company.

Anyway I had this thought this morning and now I need to go to work and the agency's social media initiatives.

Would I invest in a dot com startup?

Every Joe on the street thinks he can make a quick million or two by starting his own dot com company. Hey Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of YouTube.com did it. Unfortunately there is a saturation of the web sites which promise functionality however they are dependent on your, the user's, data. The first question to ask is why would I want to put my information on a third party web site so that web site founder can make some money. It is the sad truth but most of these companies will not last long. For example let's look at various Social Networks:

• MySpace.com - one of the first site which actually picked up in popularity. Now it is mired in mediocrity and I don't see anything new and exciting happening on the site. Did I mention that they have added Facebook like functionality.
• Facebook.com - I have to say that I was a skeptic when I joined this site however this site offers neat functionality where the user can actually spend time on the site. I am a big fan of Facebook's scrabble application
• High 5 - Started by an east indian and it's being marketed heavily in the east indian community.
• Orkut - I have to say this is probably one of the worst social networks I have come across. It is probably Google's worst purchase.
  
• Kadoo - A new social network site whose UI looks promising however I still don't have an incentive to join this group. I am not into propogating my identity across the internet
• Linkedin.com - I like this website. It's a social network for your professional contacts
• Xing.com - It is a similiar network like Linkedin however this one is popular in Europe
• PageFlakes.com - Someone emailed me asking me to experience this site. Once again I ask the question. Why should I sign up on PageFlakes.com?
• NING.com - This is the UBER social network where anyone can create their own social network. UI is not that great and it is meant as a research application.
  

After I mentioned all of these social networks, how would a investor invest in these kind of businesses? Frankly everyone of these social networks offer similiar if not identical functionaliy. I would probably want to invest in networks which have alot of users and the network has a niche like Linkedin and Xing which only work with professional social networks.