Business Social Networking and BuDuRu

Today I was following a conversation on LinkedIn about Business Social Networking and wanted to comment. Social Networking in Business happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Personally I love LinkedIn and what it has attempted to do and the technology behind Facebook is really cool; however, being first a businessmen and second a professional technologist I realized pretty early in these social networks product lifecycles that there was a few crucial drawbacks that made them impractical for use in daily business outside of Hiring, Marketing and general networking. Here is my list of issues I have with pretty much all the social networks when it comes to trying to marry our business requirements with the mostly open nature of Social Networks in general.

• People spend too much time on these sites. - Let's face it they can be addicting and in business that time is real money. Want to play Mobster, do it on your time.
• Profiles for self-promotion. - Other than being mostly tacky the question is what are we trying to sell here, my products or your moonlighting services.
• Old friends. - Specially the ones you were glad to be rid of. Are your old friends going to help our bottom line? (maybe) However, I don’t need my employees compromising our company by have their personal friends linking up with my employees “Business” account (they can see your customers).
• Bullying. - Lying, Rumors and fictitious accounts. At least I have some control over the break room or smoking area.
• Identity theft. - Let's face it people are posting entirely too much of their personal information and for some reason they honestly believe that they can trust the people in their online groups.
• Security. - There really isn't any, from a business perspective try and get a Sarbanes-Oxley or ISO Compliance on your Facebook content.

These along with a few other pet peeves are the primary reason I because involved in the BuDuRu Network http://buduru.net, BuDuRu is a private network that applies the demands of businesses with the principles of a LinkedIn or Facebook. Technically anyone can join BuDuRu; however, there is no such thing as open networking outside of the companies you do business with, so without a formal request from another member you will get really board quickly. Also BuDuRu is in it's infancy so the occasional "undocumented feature" is to be expected. Just my 2 cents, enjoy.