Web Based Business - Social Networks

Strategy is always an important aspect of any business whether it is a startup or an established one. However the difference may lie in the level of clarity in expressing a strategy. The established businesses may have a well-defined strategy to achieve their goals whereas the start-ups may want to try on a number of things before settling down on a particular long term strategy. This may be the reason of the start-ups not having a very clear and precise strategy to document, however they still need some sort of idea of how to tackle issues.

Any start up business needs to address a myriad of issues out of distribution is one of the important one. Start-up ventures should consider developing their supply chain and distributions channels cautiously because these play a major role in success of any business. Every link in the distribution chain should be considered as a partner in the chain and hence no hierarchy should be assumed. Contribution at the end of every partner goes a long way in making the chain work smoothly and leading to success of the endeavor.

The most promising business aspects of social networks are their ability to bring people together from various fragmented geographies. It helps people keep in touch with what is happening in their friend circles and also in the world in general. People can remain touch with one another for a long time after they meet once on some conference or meetings. All this now seems to gradually culminate into what some people call – “the network effect”. Further websites like Facebook are adding certain apps to the service which are gradually making these websites a hangout place for everyone. People can play games and share information on these to have fun.

The social networks are also a great source of information for marketing firms and other agencies conducting surveys. These networks are a collection of huge samples of varied nature which itself makes their use highly important in information collection. Also these networks allow firms to advertise to highly selective groups reducing their effort in reaching out to the right audience.

One of the least promising aspects of social networks is related to privacy issues. Recently, Facebook going public with most of the profile information of users is only one of the cases. Providing personal information on public forums could prove to be disastrous to some and this is something we seldom realize while posting such information. Other concern involving the social networks is that the employees in offices are spending too much time on these networks and hence these are distracting them from their jobs. Also some feel that these networks may also lead to people being segregated in silos with their computers and not interact much in person.