Extended Corporate Site(s) Network

As Enterprises start embracing the Social Networks (myspace, linkedin, facebook or orkut) and integrate with thier corporate web sites, enterprises start need to be aware of the following -

• Brand Extension - Once an enterprise decides to have an presence on any of the social networks, remember these social networks are now part of your extended corporate site. Like an enterprise takes care of thier corporate sites, they need to have the same level of attention to the social networks. People leaving comments on the social account pages need to be answered and given the utmost importance. Remember, in the social network world, the network effects of an enterprise's actions /statements /responses have a far reaching reaction. With search engines indexing everything, any wrong move can lead to a big PR fiasco

• User Generated Content - The enterprise needs to have an policy on how to make use of the content generated by the user's. Comments /Issues /Commendations /Reviews etc - anything that the web users generate, need to be tracked and an enterprise should be able mine and use the information to spread the goodwill. This will require having a Web 2.0 group in the enterprise that develops the policies and guidelines around the content generated by web users

• Distributed Authentication - As the enterprise embraces the social networks, corporate sites should start looking at providing distributed authentication mechanism for the users. Enterprises should consider standards, such as OpenID,OAuth and Friend of a Friend, to meet a broader scope of enterprise Web presence development needs.

• Test and Learn - All the Social Network phenomenon is uncharted, unexplored area, in the sense, it takes time for an enterprise to realise how to effectively make use of the social networks. So, make sure you start small, test the waters, get the learnings and keep moving up the social networking index.