The corporate side of FaceBook

My annual ICT Leaders dinner for the Princes Trust Technology Leadership Group this year (atop the BT Tower on 4th Sept) is entitled Power to the People and is all about how users (corporate users and consumers) are now in the tech. driving seat. It will major on Web 2.0 and social networking in particular. I've written many pieces about the genre but decided that i really ought to experience it myself before I could talk about it properly. So I joined FaceBook about 3 weeks ago. I have been more amazed than I expected!

I have 1200 contacts on Outlook but only 25 of them matched with existing FaceBook members - and most of those were my daughters or other younger relatives/friends. I guess that only about 10 were business acquantances and they were all less than 40 years old. But since then I've made connections with another 20 business type friends as they have started to join FaceBook too. The ages are creeping up - my 'oldest' FaceBook friend is now 68.

I have certainly been amazed by the variety of Networks available. OK, I know many are downright juvenile, but there are quite a few that are very useful. For example, I joined the Online News Association UK. The Technology Journalists network has 100+ members like Chris Nuttall from the FT and Jack Schofield from the Guardian (Yep, I think Jack is even older than me!) The Web 2.0 (Entrepreneurs) network has 10,892 members!

I've already written about E&Y's US network which has over 8,500 members and is used for recruitment. Today I came across BT's FaceBook network which has an amazing 7,398 members. It's a 'closed' group - only accessable by BT employees.

Any other examples of 'corporate' FaceBook networks I can use? I'd especially be interested in examples of how they are used and what success they are having. Please either add as a comment or email me on rholway@holway.com