Web 2.0 aficionados may sniff their noses at social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, but the reality is that they are introducing millions of young, and not-so-young, web users to the potential of the next generation web.
Playthings they may be but these sites have shown spectacularly the power of helping to create and link networks of friends and contacts.
There have been efforts to recreate the success of social networking in the business world - most notably LinkedIn, a US site that is extremely popular with technology executives. Closer to home though, Investnet, the company behind the First Tuesday and Wireless Wednesday events, is now applying its experience with real world networking to the creation of online social networks.
To tie in with Investnet's Create & Innovate conference in DCU next month, it has created the createandinnovate.eu website which it describes as an "online business networking and group collaboration tool". Business people can create their own profile page including the kind of services they offer and seek, connect with others with similar interests, endorse those they have worked with in the past and exchange documents and messages with other members.
According to Marc Butterly, director of Investnet, fostering connections between semi-State development agencies, multinational companies operating in Ireland and indigenous firms could have massive benefits for the economy as a whole. Addressing privacy issues that might exist, companies and business groups will be able to set up their own private networks which they can choose to connect to other groups or networks.
A specific network for the health sector has been established at healthcarenetwork.eu while special interest groups around elderly care and innovation have been established on the main site.
Butterly says they will offer the platform to any third party that is interested - he believes LinkedIn has taken the wrong approach by trying to build networks around its own brand and says Investnet will build networks around existing brands.
The networking platform has been developed in-house by Investnet and it will host the technology for any organisations that wish to sign up. Butterly says that for a network with up to 1,000 users, it will cost €3,000 to set up and there will be an annual maintenance fee of €3,000.
In the near future a First Tuesday network will be added, opening up the service to a large part of the local technology industry who have attended the "real-world" networking event. "We've been building networks for seven years so this is a logical extension," says Butterly.
Despite a high-profile speaker in the form of Bill Coleman, chief executive of virtualisation software company Cassatt and a founder of BEA Systems, the fastest company in Silicon Valley to ever reach $1 billion in turnover, Butterly says the Create & Innovate event in DCU on April 24th and 25th is more a "make and do" product development forum than a conference.
"The idea is for teams from organisations to come and book a place and actually apply creativity and innovation tools to their next big idea or to their existing business process or model," says Butterly.
As such, he believes the event is the ideal launch pad for the introduction of social networking to Ireland's business community.
While Investnet has put a professional skin on the social networking phenomenon, it remains to be seen whether Irish executives will embrace the concept as eagerly as their teenage kids.
