Do you remember when calling your customers, suppliers, and transportation carriers for their EDI specs or informing them of system changes was the primary form of communication? Then it moved on to emailing them back and forth. After that, there were several websites that gathered the pertinent information, usually for a particular industry, and you could "Sign up and be connected to all your trading partners". This never seemed to work as well as everyone hoped.
I've been wondering if there is an opportunity to use one of the existing social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ to communicate with existing business partners about important information that is not for everyone to see? Maybe some of you already are via Facebook Lists, LinkedIn Groups, Google+ Circles, or a purchased or developed in-house solution.
While the existing networks have some of the necessary features - the ability to link or attach documents, the ability to determine how and how often notifications are received, the ability to be approve group members - they don't have the ability for connections to post anonymously, which I think would be beneficial in a highly competitive industry. Another important feature, not in the current frameworks, is the ability to see if a connection has logged in and/or read a post.
Some of the benefits of using a social network structure is the information is pushed rather than pulled (which frees connections from having to check websites regularly), announce once and several connections receive the information, a continuous stream to view history, and connections could post questions for the group to see or directly to the group administrator. The two-way communication could benefit the entire group.
An example of an application would be an EDI Coordinator at a retailer communicating with suppliers regarding data and specification changes, system delays, and upgrades. The retail industry is constantly making changes and the ability to communicate important information once would save time and money.
Ideally, a network would emerge to avoid the scenario we currently have with social networks...too many to keep up with.
Are you using one of the social networks to communicate with your business network? What benefits are you seeing? What is missing from their features?
