Where are You Stand in the Social Technology Adoption Curve

Web 2.0 and social net­works have gained per­cep­ti­ble mind­-share in past years, especially in year 2009. As many of you may know – social net­works sig­nif­i­cantly reduce the cost of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ship build­ing.

With social technology into the place, today, it is possible to get a person’s professional background in detail, as well as people s/he works with currently and has worked with/gone to school with in the past. It is possible to talk with the person’s former colleagues. And, it is increasingly possible to learn some of the person’s thoughts on certain business challenges through his/her activity in online forums, as well as his/her answers on other people’s blogs.

If you still can remember – from the early Netscape days, to the dot-com bubble days, and then to now the Facebook and Twitter days, each internet cycles brought lots of excitement with lots of start-ups to the market. Because of the technology changes etc, Web 2.0 creates the opportunity to split off the information about the person from trust and relationship building, which is the real differentiators.

Example, using web 2.0 social networking within the company allows sellers to easily tap into the gurus that are available, as well as the ability of connecting to resources within one’s own organization to achieve helping employees (i.e. sales) have better conversations in the market.

However, due to the expec­ta­tions and invest­ments are too high com­pared to com­pe­tence, often time, we heard, read or experiences the “Fail­ure and Dis­ap­point­ment” in the process of trying to make it work. As the Inter­net came to touch vir­tu­ally all areas of com­merce, social net­works will assume an increas­ingly dom­i­nant role in how all peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate.

Speaking of that, in his recent article Social Technology Adoption Curve Benefits and Risks, Jeremiah has re-write, re-analyze old ideas, principles, graphics etc and build his own following matrix in the context of social technologies and adoption by both individuals and mixed in with organizations and industries. It is really an interesting article that worth your time to read it.