Another day, another survey telling us how useful and important social networking media are in our lives. This time it's "leading" email training training and consultancy company Mesmo, which has released a survey claiming that three quarters of UK companies use "Web 2.0" as alternatives to email for sharing information in their business environment.
We have a number of problems with this and similar surveys. First of all, as with any survey, methodology is important, and a sample size of 315 respondents seems a bit low to start making bold claims about UK businesses in general. It's important to know which types of business were included in the survey, a fact curiously missing from the press release: a high proportion of media and marketing firms would skew the results towards a higher adoption of internet technologies.
Secondly, the use of "Web 2.0" to describe social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook is misleading. Web 2.0 refers to the underlying way in which web sites are developed to promote separation of data and design, which enables easier information sharing and collaboration. While many social networking sites may use Web 2.0 technologies, the businesses or individuals that use these sites aren't necessarily using Web 2.0 themselves.
This leads to our third complaint. While many people find social networking sites useful, we get the impression that many users are bullied into adopting them. Apart from the obvious need to use the sites that all your peers are using, promoting buzzwords such as Web 2.0 seems to be a way of making less technically-inclined users feel left behind if they don't jump on the bandwagon. Maybe this is the reason why so many Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs are left unattended by users who signed up but found they didn't actually help them in the real world?
Let's not give the impression we're Luddites, or against the rise of new web technologies. Facebook is a remarkable tool for keeping in touch and re-kindling old friendships, and business networking sites such as LinkedIn are a great way to sell yourself to prospective employers. Web 2.0 technologies are indeed useful, and adopting them *within* a business – for example, using a wiki as an intranet – is a great idea.
Twitter's utility to business is less obvious however: while being able to post SMS-length messages to the world may seem to be a cool idea, in reality Twitter seems to be turning into just another medium for celebrities to satisfy their need for exposure. There are nuggets of wisdom to be had, but you'll need to trawl through mountains of inanity to find anything useful.
The idea that companies can learn more about their customers by keeping an eye out for complaints about their products or services on the Web is an obvious one – so obvious in fact that it's a wonder why companies haven't been doing this for years. There are plenty of forums and other web communities where users vent their frustrations – Twitter is just another medium, just the most obvious one.
Maybe Twitter's utility lies in the fact that it can wake companies up to the amount of customer opinion waiting for them on the Web – if they know where to find it. A 100-word rant on Twitter may not be the best material to work with, however. If your business hasn't got a forum for its users already, then searching for forums and websites related to your industry may bring up thoughtful and constructive criticism – or even praise – for your company's products.
However, simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook page will simply add to the noise and won't instantly encourage discussion or communication with customers. That's something companies have to work hard on, whatever technologies they're using.
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