Law Technology Now put up podcast on how client relationship management and social networking tools will change the way we practice law: Almost Live from LegalTech West Coast: Tom Baldwin -- Social Networking. (registration required). The podcast was a recording of Tom Baldwin's presentation at Legal Tech West Coast. The podcast is about 12 minutes long.
One of the pillars of knowledge management is that who you know is as important as what you know. Tom surveyed broadcast emails and found that a huge portion of those email were asking for information about people. Attorneys were looking for outside experts, internal experts, service providers, matchmaking clients, pitching clients and clearing conflicts.
Tom has found Client Relationship Management systems to be lacking. CRM systems have grand ambitions of pulling the firm's contacts into one place. Tom has found that most CRM systems get relegated to managing external marketing lists.
Tom has become more of a fan of Enterprise Relationship Management systems like Contact Networks and Branch IT. ERM systems mine external email traffic to identify relationships. [My post on Contact Networks: Contact Networks - Enterprise Relationship Management.]
Tom also sees some tools coming from entity extraction. In court filings, you should be able to extract the party names, the judge and the jurisdiction. That information is in fairly standard locations in a document. Then when looking to see what experience the firm has with a particular judge or in a particular jurisdiction, the entity extraction system can help answer that question.
One warning about the podcast. I understand that Law Technology Now needs effective advertising to make money. But this is the first podcast that inserts an advertisement into the middle of the podcast. I found it very jarring to cut off in the middle of Tom Baldwin's presentation to an ad for Blue Arc.
Showing posts with label CRM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CRM. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Connections in Context Replay
On June 20, I was the moderator of a webinar: Connections in Context – The New Face of CRM sponsored by the Knowledge Management Peer Group of the International Legal Technology Association. The speaker was Oz Benamram the Director of Knowledge Management of Morrison & Foerster.
A replay of that webinar is now available on the ILTA website: Connections in Context - Who Mentioned CRM?
A replay of that webinar is now available on the ILTA website: Connections in Context - Who Mentioned CRM?
Enterprise search has become the standard for helping to make organizations’ information retrieval processes more efficient. Improving user access to data across the enterprise is key. But effective search can do so much more than just improve existing business processes, it can transform your business network by exposing otherwise hidden expertise, customer relationships and cross-selling opportunities. In this session, Oz Benamram demonstrates how to transform your business development process with enterprise search by automatically sharing relationship connections and context throughout the enterprise and provide the benefits of a contextual, searchable network to your stakeholders to achieve maximum adoption and effectiveness.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Connections in Context
I was the moderator of a webinar: Connections in Context – The New Face of CRM sponsored by the Knowledge Management Peer Group of the International Legal Technology Association. The speaker was Oz Benamram the Director of Knowledge Management of Morrison & Foerster. The presentation was a retake of the presentation he gave at the Enterprise Search Summit.
Oz has done some great work on finding documents. So I was enthusiastic to see his take on finding people.
My Notes:
The goal of CRM has been to help you find someone and to deliver information about that someone to help you decide if that someone is the "one." We need to make it easy to find people, whether internal or external, and see our shared experience with this person.
Oz set forth Amazon.com, with all of the related content related to the product. With Facebook, he pointed out the flow of information from Facebook.
There are three keys around people: who, why and what. Who are the People and Contacts. The Why is the client, matter or project. The What are emails and documents. It also important to coordinate those with when and where.
The goal is to make the information findable in a Google-like manner. That is one simple search box that integrates all systems. It also important to filter the results like you do in Amazon or Clusty (powered by Vivisimo).
Oz moved onto a presentation of the contacts module of his AnswerBase system. AnswerBase is powered by Recommind. The tool uses a relationship analysis tool from Contact Networks (in a proof of concept). This tool looks at the email traffic between internal and external people to show the strength of relationship. They also add info from the CRM system, HR databases, document management system, billing system, matter management system and marketing systems.
They had a privacy issue related to harvesting email. They limited it to emails that were put into their email filing system. This allows you to expose the email and alleviated privacy concerns.
Oz moved onto finding contacts in context. This involved some entity extraction. They use West KM to find courts, judges and parties mentioned in the document. (This is very litigation focused.)
Oz moved on to finding internal expertise. They mash together information from the HR system, the documents the attorney has drafted, the information on the attorney's matters and the attorney's time entries.
Oz has done some great work on finding documents. So I was enthusiastic to see his take on finding people.
My Notes:
The goal of CRM has been to help you find someone and to deliver information about that someone to help you decide if that someone is the "one." We need to make it easy to find people, whether internal or external, and see our shared experience with this person.
Oz set forth Amazon.com, with all of the related content related to the product. With Facebook, he pointed out the flow of information from Facebook.
There are three keys around people: who, why and what. Who are the People and Contacts. The Why is the client, matter or project. The What are emails and documents. It also important to coordinate those with when and where.
The goal is to make the information findable in a Google-like manner. That is one simple search box that integrates all systems. It also important to filter the results like you do in Amazon or Clusty (powered by Vivisimo).
Oz moved onto a presentation of the contacts module of his AnswerBase system. AnswerBase is powered by Recommind. The tool uses a relationship analysis tool from Contact Networks (in a proof of concept). This tool looks at the email traffic between internal and external people to show the strength of relationship. They also add info from the CRM system, HR databases, document management system, billing system, matter management system and marketing systems.
They had a privacy issue related to harvesting email. They limited it to emails that were put into their email filing system. This allows you to expose the email and alleviated privacy concerns.
Oz moved onto finding contacts in context. This involved some entity extraction. They use West KM to find courts, judges and parties mentioned in the document. (This is very litigation focused.)
Oz moved on to finding internal expertise. They mash together information from the HR system, the documents the attorney has drafted, the information on the attorney's matters and the attorney's time entries.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Contact Networks - Enterprise Relationship Management
We had Rich Rifkin and some of his colleagues in from Contact Networks to see what their product can do. I was left very impressed.
They call their product Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) and distinguish it from Client Relationship Management (CRM) products. I have posted about my dissatisfaction with CRM systems: CRM in Law Firms, Is CRM Worth It? The Pros and Cons of Client Relationship Management. The problem is that they do not add much value to the lawyer so there is little incentive for them to add and maintain the information in the CRM system.
Contact Networks mines information from email traffic, address books, calendar, the CRM system and other available data sources. In particular, it matches an email domain to database of companies. So it knows that an email to someone@gs.com, is an email to someone at Goldman Sachs. Using that email address they match the contact information to the CRM system or the contacts to flush out the name, title and other information.
They crunch all of the contact information, the frequency of email communication, and some other information to determine the strength of the relationship between someone inside the firm and an external contact.
Contact Networks provides a simple, "Google-ish" interface to search for who inside the firm knows a particular person outside the firm or who inside the firm has contacts at a particular company. That is a question that passes through my email system dozens of times a day. InterAction was set up to try to answer the question. But InterAction relies on attorneys adding contact information and dealing with its kludgey interface. Contact Networks also goes farther than showing Who Knows Who to showing How Well Who Knows Who.
When seeing the relationship, it displays what data is part of the relationship: emails, contact card, InterAction entry, etc. This exposes some interesting information. A large amount of email traffic goes out to people that are not in your address book. Looking back at my recent traffic, I agree that the proposition is completely true. I am just as lazy and time-pressured as anyone else. I often will just hit reply all and not bother adding the contacts into my address book. Rich threw out a number of 70% of email traffic recipients not being a person's address book. A benefit of Contact Networks is that it can match the email address and email traffic from one person to someone else's contact card or InterAction information for that person. I may just be hitting reply all. But if my junior associate has entered that person's contact information, Contact Networks will match the contact information to the email address.
Contact Networks also has a compilation of Standard Industry Codes for the companies so you can associate the contact with an industry. The you can search for contacts in a particular industry and see who in the firm knows the person and how well they know the person.
Contact Networks is not trying to position itself as an alternative to InterAction or CRM, but as a complement. Contact Networks is able to pull in lots more information than InterAction can get on its own. Bu Contact Networks does not have the management and control features of InterAction to track information and catalog it.
Obviously, Contact Networks focused on alleviating concerns of privacy. First, they do not look at the contents of the email. They just grab the address, date and frequency of email contact. You can also allow users to opt-out, you can allow users to apply a private label to exclude the contact information and you can limit who has access to the ERM information.
The great thing about Contact Networks is that it requires no user input. It harvest everything from existing inputs in other processes and systems. It has a simple user interface, so training is a few minutes or a simple email instruction.
Tom Baldwin has been telling me to bring in Contact Networks for months. I am glad I finally did.
They call their product Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) and distinguish it from Client Relationship Management (CRM) products. I have posted about my dissatisfaction with CRM systems: CRM in Law Firms, Is CRM Worth It? The Pros and Cons of Client Relationship Management. The problem is that they do not add much value to the lawyer so there is little incentive for them to add and maintain the information in the CRM system.
Contact Networks mines information from email traffic, address books, calendar, the CRM system and other available data sources. In particular, it matches an email domain to database of companies. So it knows that an email to someone@gs.com, is an email to someone at Goldman Sachs. Using that email address they match the contact information to the CRM system or the contacts to flush out the name, title and other information.
They crunch all of the contact information, the frequency of email communication, and some other information to determine the strength of the relationship between someone inside the firm and an external contact.
Contact Networks provides a simple, "Google-ish" interface to search for who inside the firm knows a particular person outside the firm or who inside the firm has contacts at a particular company. That is a question that passes through my email system dozens of times a day. InterAction was set up to try to answer the question. But InterAction relies on attorneys adding contact information and dealing with its kludgey interface. Contact Networks also goes farther than showing Who Knows Who to showing How Well Who Knows Who.
When seeing the relationship, it displays what data is part of the relationship: emails, contact card, InterAction entry, etc. This exposes some interesting information. A large amount of email traffic goes out to people that are not in your address book. Looking back at my recent traffic, I agree that the proposition is completely true. I am just as lazy and time-pressured as anyone else. I often will just hit reply all and not bother adding the contacts into my address book. Rich threw out a number of 70% of email traffic recipients not being a person's address book. A benefit of Contact Networks is that it can match the email address and email traffic from one person to someone else's contact card or InterAction information for that person. I may just be hitting reply all. But if my junior associate has entered that person's contact information, Contact Networks will match the contact information to the email address.
Contact Networks also has a compilation of Standard Industry Codes for the companies so you can associate the contact with an industry. The you can search for contacts in a particular industry and see who in the firm knows the person and how well they know the person.
Contact Networks is not trying to position itself as an alternative to InterAction or CRM, but as a complement. Contact Networks is able to pull in lots more information than InterAction can get on its own. Bu Contact Networks does not have the management and control features of InterAction to track information and catalog it.
Obviously, Contact Networks focused on alleviating concerns of privacy. First, they do not look at the contents of the email. They just grab the address, date and frequency of email contact. You can also allow users to opt-out, you can allow users to apply a private label to exclude the contact information and you can limit who has access to the ERM information.
The great thing about Contact Networks is that it requires no user input. It harvest everything from existing inputs in other processes and systems. It has a simple user interface, so training is a few minutes or a simple email instruction.
Tom Baldwin has been telling me to bring in Contact Networks for months. I am glad I finally did.
Friday, April 25, 2008
CRM in Law Firms
Andrew K. Burger has a story in CRM Buyer: CRM in Law Firms: The Jury's Still Out. Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch pointed out this story in her post: Law Firms Still Not Relating to Client Relations Management Software.
The Firm uses Interaction as its CRM. I find Interaction to be much better in theory than practice. I think everyone agrees at a firm level that the sharing of contact information and relationships across the firm is a terrific goal and adds tremendous value to the firm. In my experience, attorneys are willing to share contact and relationship information with members of the firm. Yes, they are cautious how it is used and want some some credit for the relationship. But that position is true for all knowledge sharing.
As Carolyn points out:
I want the CRM system to make it easier for me to do my job. Contributing contact and relationship information into a public repository creates little or no marginal value to me. All of that information is already sitting in my email contacts, in my head and other local places. The current CRM system does very little to help me manage that information. I would spend much more time using Interaction if it provided much more functionality to me as an individual. All of its extra function is derived from collecting information from others, not in providing function to the individual.
Unfortunately, CRM systems only provide a small margin of additional benefit to the individual lawyer. That margin is too small to motivate lawyers to change behaviors or to learn the new tool.
This scenario is true of lots of first generation knowledge management tools. They put the emphasis on the benefit of sharing knowledge across the firm. They did not focus on making it easier for the individual to manage their own knowledge or the knowledge of a small group.
Perhaps there is some future hope for Interaction and CRM for law firms. The article in CRM Buyer has this quote:
The Firm uses Interaction as its CRM. I find Interaction to be much better in theory than practice. I think everyone agrees at a firm level that the sharing of contact information and relationships across the firm is a terrific goal and adds tremendous value to the firm. In my experience, attorneys are willing to share contact and relationship information with members of the firm. Yes, they are cautious how it is used and want some some credit for the relationship. But that position is true for all knowledge sharing.
As Carolyn points out:
[T]he larger barrier to integration of CRM is institutional: Most lawyers simply aren't willing to take the time (or sacrifice the billable hours) to input critical data. Then, when CRM fails due to lack of lawyer commitment, lawyers blame the software and subsequently grow even more resistant to CRM efforts.Knowledge sharing is a marketplace. If I am going to take time to contribute something, I expect to get something back in return. Increasing the knowledge resources of the firm is not enough. I previously wrote about this in Personal Knowledge Management and the Knowledge Market. A lawyer is more likely to use a new tool if it provides more functionality to them then an existing tool. Why should I enter information into a clunky public space instead of a persona space where I can organize the information in the way that makes sense to me.
I want the CRM system to make it easier for me to do my job. Contributing contact and relationship information into a public repository creates little or no marginal value to me. All of that information is already sitting in my email contacts, in my head and other local places. The current CRM system does very little to help me manage that information. I would spend much more time using Interaction if it provided much more functionality to me as an individual. All of its extra function is derived from collecting information from others, not in providing function to the individual.
Unfortunately, CRM systems only provide a small margin of additional benefit to the individual lawyer. That margin is too small to motivate lawyers to change behaviors or to learn the new tool.
This scenario is true of lots of first generation knowledge management tools. They put the emphasis on the benefit of sharing knowledge across the firm. They did not focus on making it easier for the individual to manage their own knowledge or the knowledge of a small group.
Perhaps there is some future hope for Interaction and CRM for law firms. The article in CRM Buyer has this quote:
"The foundation for incorporating Web 2.0 applications, such as wikis, blogs and other social networking tools, into InterAction are likewise already in place, and LexisNexis is moving in that direction, according to [Tracey Blackburn, LexisNexis product marketing manager]."For now, InterAction does not even have a field for linking to a person's LinkedIn profile. That is a place where people are updating information about themselves and who they know. If InterAction could combine external information about people, with our internal information and give me a better way to organize and manage my contacts, that would make it useful for me.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Is CRM Worth It? The Pros and Cons of Client Relationship Management
I wrote part of a case study for Law Practice magazine from the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section: Is CRM Worth It? The Pros and Cons of Client Relationship Management.
Simon Chester, Connie Crosby, Ross Fishman and I all pointed out the pros and cons of a law firm adopting a client relationship management program. I think all of us agreed that a CRM system is generally a good thing to have. I think we also all agreed that adopting a CRM system is hard to implement from a technology and a cultural perspective. You need the firm's lawyers and staff to be willing to share their contact information. You also need the technology to make it easy to share.
Simon Chester, Connie Crosby, Ross Fishman and I all pointed out the pros and cons of a law firm adopting a client relationship management program. I think all of us agreed that a CRM system is generally a good thing to have. I think we also all agreed that adopting a CRM system is hard to implement from a technology and a cultural perspective. You need the firm's lawyers and staff to be willing to share their contact information. You also need the technology to make it easy to share.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Social Networks Update
Back in the end of July, I posted a story: Does anyone know ____?: CRM vs. LinkedIn vs. Facebook comparing the features and powers of three social network tools that I use. One aspect of the post was the number of people I knew in each system.
InterAction is the firm's Contact Relationship Management software. In the system I am identified as knowing 1362 people, up from 1300 on July 23. The system can identify who knows who so it is a social network tool. This includes people inside and outside the firm.
In LinkedIn, I now have 114 "connections" up from 62 in late July.
In Facebook, I now have 40 friends, a huge increase from the 8 I had in late July. Of those 40 almost half are people who work at my firm. Almost all of them have joined Facebook since late July.
Email is still the dominant form of business communication and has been for many years. It was no surprise that the contacts in InterAction (which is largely driven by email) continue to grow at a steady pace.
I am really surprised at the growing numbers in Facebook. Surprised is not the right word. I was surprised by the communication powers of Facebook. I think most people find that communications power to be a great tool to use. The big barrier is wading through the media coverage to try Facebook out for themselves and see what it can do for them.
I ran into one of my Facebook "friends" in the hallway. Although we had not run into each face-to-face for weeks, we both remarked how it felt like we had been talking to each other everyday.
That is the real power of social network tools: the ability to enhance personal communications.
InterAction is the firm's Contact Relationship Management software. In the system I am identified as knowing 1362 people, up from 1300 on July 23. The system can identify who knows who so it is a social network tool. This includes people inside and outside the firm.
In LinkedIn, I now have 114 "connections" up from 62 in late July.
In Facebook, I now have 40 friends, a huge increase from the 8 I had in late July. Of those 40 almost half are people who work at my firm. Almost all of them have joined Facebook since late July.
Email is still the dominant form of business communication and has been for many years. It was no surprise that the contacts in InterAction (which is largely driven by email) continue to grow at a steady pace.
I am really surprised at the growing numbers in Facebook. Surprised is not the right word. I was surprised by the communication powers of Facebook. I think most people find that communications power to be a great tool to use. The big barrier is wading through the media coverage to try Facebook out for themselves and see what it can do for them.
I ran into one of my Facebook "friends" in the hallway. Although we had not run into each face-to-face for weeks, we both remarked how it felt like we had been talking to each other everyday.
That is the real power of social network tools: the ability to enhance personal communications.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
InterAction Attorney B--t C--p
Sunny Bane, Marketing CRM Manager of DLA Piper US LLP
Deborah Holt, President of DH Training & Technology Consulting
Design targeted training sessions for different user groups. How you train and sell the application to a senior partner is different than the approach you would use for a secretary and is different than the approach you would use for a junior associate. Accessibility to attorneys is key so that you can identify their needs and customize the presentation to them.
Map out an ongoing training strategy, communication strategy and incentives (giving out toys). Instead of incentives, you can tap the competitiveness (contests for the best results). Come up with an elevator pitch: This is a client service tool; This is a better tool for tracking and managing the information. You need to stay with the message over the course of training, deployment and refinement. Make it about the content, not the software. Point out the time-saving benefits of using InterAction.
Tackle the know issues and responses:
- "I don't want to share."
- "I don't have the time."
- "The program is too____ ."
You need to show them the time-saving benefits of InterAction. Offer them incentives and rewards for participation. It may be better to take a slow deployment and ensure data quality. You will lose users if the first thing they run into is bad information in InterAction. That said you should have a clear goal for the time it will take the percentage of contacts for contact resolution.
It is important to establish best practices for incoming attorneys. Deborah's position is to not include InterAction training into lateral training. They will be too overwhelmed with how to use core systems and to begin practicing in a new environment. The strategy is different for first year associates. They just need to learn how to build a collection of contacts. They do not have the problem of going through the "resolution" process of associating contacts into the InterAction database. Deborah also thinks that desk-side training with attorneys can be the best way to show them how to use the system. This can be a time-consuming process. The training should focus on the workflow process the attorney goes through to find information about a contact. For associates, you should also focus on the partnership track for associates. Show them the business development opportunities and information in the system. Increased knowledge of a person can give a competitive advantage. Since you are documenting their business development activities, they can show how much they are doing. There are a different set of challenges for partners. They may think they know the contact information. The pitch can focus on the referral tracking (I have not figured out how to make this work.) Emphasize the tracking abilities. Practice group leaders should be targeted to promote, use and demo InterAction. If that succeeds, they can can spread the word through the practice group. You need to be persistent. The more they hear about the benefits of InterAction, the more likely they will be curious to explore and use. It takes many awhile to get someone to realize the benefits of a new tool.
UPDATE: I changed the title of this blog post based on request by Lourdes De Armas and her company Attorney Boot Cap (tm). Apparently she obtained a trademark for the use of Attorney Boot Camp (tm).
Monday, July 23, 2007
Does anyone know _________?: CRM vs. LinkedIn vs. Facebook
One of the most common requests that comes across my firm's email system is "Does anyone know ______?" Lately, I have been thinking about how our CRM system compares against LinkedIn and Facebook to answer this question and the type of information each provides to answer the question.
The question of "does anyone know ___? is really looking for one of two things: (1) Can anyone introduce me to the person? or (2) Does anyone know anything about this person?
First up is InterAction, our internal Customer Relationship Management software. It shows the typical contact information, as well as being able to show employment history, marketing activities and matters the person has been involved in. It ties into Outlook so that Outlook and InterAction are synced together. If a person is in your Outlook Contacts and you have shared the contact as public, you are shown as knowing the person.
InterAction is a great source for answering the question, "Does anyone know ____?" It works better for establishing the first level of introduction, where someone is looking for another to introduce them to a third party. Although, InterAction can hold information about the person, it generally does not have much information beyond contact information and who knows the person. It is easy to find a person’s information and add them to your contacts.
The problem is that most contacts only have basic contact information. Most users do not populate the additional relationship and information fields available in InterAction. The other problem is convincing users to make their contacts public to the firm. Without this step, the relationship is not shown.
I am marked as knowing 1,300 contacts in InterAction.
LinkedIn is focused on the ability to answer the question of "Can anyone introduce me to ____?" LinkedIn wraps a network around you and the people you know. The first level is the connections with the people you know. It creates a second network of the connections to your connections. Then, it creates a the third network of the connections to the connections to your connections.
For my network, I have 62 people in my first level of contacts. At the second level, those 62 people have 2,200+ connections. Then at the third level, it results in 188,600+ connections. If someone is in my network (but not one of my 62 contacts), I can ask for an introduction from one of my 62 contacts, who would in turn pass it along through the connection chain.
Facebook is easily the least "professional" of these systems. Like LinkedIn, it requires a contact to set up an account and add information. The information can be incredibly robust and cover both professional and personal life. With its birth on college campus, much of the Facebook platform is focused on personal activities. But with the new applications available, there is an increasingly ability to provide professional information.
It is easy to create a “friend.” Just click “Add to Friends” and the contact gets a message asking to be your “friend,” which they can approve or deny. Once a person is a friend, you get to jump right into all of the their information.
I have 8 "friends" in Facebook. [Add me as a friend.]
Obviously comparing the three platforms is like comparing, apples, oranges and potatoes. They do different things. But they are all focused on creating, displaying and exploiting the relationships among people.
The power of each system is based on the power of the network theory. The more people that use the network, the more useful it becomes. InterAction is the most useful tool within the enterprise because so many people use it. Assuming that I am representative of the attorneys in the firm, there is a sharp drop off in the utility of LinkedIn and even sharper drop to Facebook.
Comparing the 8 friends in Facebook to the 62 connections in LinkedIn is a reflection of the user demographic. I loaded my list of contacts from InterAction into both. It just turns out that only 62 of my 1,300 contacts are in LinkedIn and almost none of them are in Facebook.
The question of "does anyone know ___? is really looking for one of two things: (1) Can anyone introduce me to the person? or (2) Does anyone know anything about this person?
First up is InterAction, our internal Customer Relationship Management software. It shows the typical contact information, as well as being able to show employment history, marketing activities and matters the person has been involved in. It ties into Outlook so that Outlook and InterAction are synced together. If a person is in your Outlook Contacts and you have shared the contact as public, you are shown as knowing the person.
InterAction is a great source for answering the question, "Does anyone know ____?" It works better for establishing the first level of introduction, where someone is looking for another to introduce them to a third party. Although, InterAction can hold information about the person, it generally does not have much information beyond contact information and who knows the person. It is easy to find a person’s information and add them to your contacts.
The problem is that most contacts only have basic contact information. Most users do not populate the additional relationship and information fields available in InterAction. The other problem is convincing users to make their contacts public to the firm. Without this step, the relationship is not shown.
I am marked as knowing 1,300 contacts in InterAction.
LinkedIn is great tool for finding people and setting up a "connection." Here, the contact information is totally controlled by the contact themselves. For some contacts, there is a wealth information. The information can be great, but it depends on the person setting up the account in LinkedIn and adding the information. The background information is much more textual and descriptive than the spreadsheet-like InterAction information.
LinkedIn is focused on the ability to answer the question of "Can anyone introduce me to ____?" LinkedIn wraps a network around you and the people you know. The first level is the connections with the people you know. It creates a second network of the connections to your connections. Then, it creates a the third network of the connections to the connections to your connections.
For my network, I have 62 people in my first level of contacts. At the second level, those 62 people have 2,200+ connections. Then at the third level, it results in 188,600+ connections. If someone is in my network (but not one of my 62 contacts), I can ask for an introduction from one of my 62 contacts, who would in turn pass it along through the connection chain.
Facebook is easily the least "professional" of these systems. Like LinkedIn, it requires a contact to set up an account and add information. The information can be incredibly robust and cover both professional and personal life. With its birth on college campus, much of the Facebook platform is focused on personal activities. But with the new applications available, there is an increasingly ability to provide professional information.
It is easy to create a “friend.” Just click “Add to Friends” and the contact gets a message asking to be your “friend,” which they can approve or deny. Once a person is a friend, you get to jump right into all of the their information.
I have 8 "friends" in Facebook. [Add me as a friend.]
Obviously comparing the three platforms is like comparing, apples, oranges and potatoes. They do different things. But they are all focused on creating, displaying and exploiting the relationships among people.
The power of each system is based on the power of the network theory. The more people that use the network, the more useful it becomes. InterAction is the most useful tool within the enterprise because so many people use it. Assuming that I am representative of the attorneys in the firm, there is a sharp drop off in the utility of LinkedIn and even sharper drop to Facebook.
Comparing the 8 friends in Facebook to the 62 connections in LinkedIn is a reflection of the user demographic. I loaded my list of contacts from InterAction into both. It just turns out that only 62 of my 1,300 contacts are in LinkedIn and almost none of them are in Facebook.
These social tools have a great ability to set up connections and give you background information on people. But they still suffer from a lack of users.
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