Enterprise social networking has the potential to completely revolutionize the way things are done in the corporate world.
That is the conclusion you come to once you get to learn what the said networking is, how it works, and the things it has potential to do.
Enterprise networking is what you get when you decide to harness your networking technologies and platforms for business purposes.
Now social network itself, at least in the computer-based sense we know it today, is not a very old concept.
It is barely a decade old.
In the early years of the Internet revolution, efforts were made to make social networking a possibility.
But those were largely futile, on account of the fact that the time for it hadn't yet come.
It was not until the mid years of the first decade in this millennium (around 2004-2005) that real networking really took off - and there has never been any looking back.
As would be expected, it was not very long before business people saw the opportunity to improve their business operations inherent in social networking, and as networking found more and more business applications, a new sub-type of it known as 'enterprise social networking' was born.
Enterprise social networking has revolutionized, and still has the potential to further revolutionize, the way businesses talk to their customers.
Previously, that used to be largely a one-way communication dynamic.
It was the businesses talking to their customers through adverts, but without an opportunity to hear what the customers were saying in reply.
But with Enterprise networking, it becomes possible to have a real, two way conversation.
This new form of networking has revolutionized, and still has the potential to further revolutionize, the way businesses interact with their employees.
Enterprise networking has made it possible to get rid of the barriers to communication that used to exist, between employees and their employers.
Previously, employees who felt badly violated by their immediate managers would often have no one to help them.
The other people who could help them would be the guys in 'top management.
' But talking to them in a normal layered organization would have meant making use of the very same managers who were violating them.
Today, many mid-level managers dare not mistreat their employees, knowing that through networking tools, those employees may have a way of directly talking with 'top management' without necessarily passing through them.
Furthermore, Enterprise networking makes anonymous employee-employer communication possible, where that happens to be what employees need to freely ventilate about their workplace problems.
Enterprise social networking has revolutionized, and still has the potential to further revolutionize, the way various actors in businesses interact.
It becomes possible, for instance, for the guys in R&D to interact directly with the guys in the production lines regarding the practicality of their ideas.
It further becomes possible for the folks in R&D to directly pick feedback from marketing guys (or even directly from the customers) on how their products are performing, and on how they can be improved upon.
Lastly but not least, it has revolutionized, and still has the potential to further revolutionize, the way businesses (various independent businesses) interact with one another.
Through Enterprise networking, collection of business intelligence becomes very easy.
By keeping your ears close to the grapevine (which enterprise social networking simplifies), you get the opportunity to know what your competitors are doing/not doing, without having to furtively send spies.
The ordinary sharing of notes between managers of businesses in the same industry also becomes much easier, through enterprise social networking.