Overview of Business Social Network Project

1. Social Network for Business
Project overview
Mode of functioning
Under social network we mean internet-based platform for communication, whose
communication nodes are members of the network – like Facebook, LinkedIn, Vkontakte,
Profeo, etc.
A member of the offered business social network could be a company or any other commercial
body that interacts with the other companies or commercial structures. Network member has
its own account for placing the information about the company, its activity and contacts. Other
network members have a default option to add their comments to the account page of other
members.
Network members could make contacts of several types – for partners, owners, clients etc.
These contacts are visible for other network members, by default. Network members could
edit the level of visibility of their own contacts for others. Contacts could exist only by joint
consent.
Network members could make Communities. Every Community has its own page, as well as
membership conditions.
New opportunities
Transparency
Owing to open connections and open classified information in account entries, network
members could get information about the contacts and activity of other companies. In that
way, company demonstrates its transparency and openness. Besides, account page could be
source of additional information, as well as retranslate the information from corporate
website.
Trust
Because the connections could be made only by joint consent, and account page could be
commented by other network members, information has higher reliability, than in ads or on
the company site.
Search opportunities
Business Social Network has the structure of database with homogeneous data. Every network
member could make search by his own criteria. In that way Business Social Network becomes
the big business catalogue and convenient instrument for search and making business contacts.
Research opportunities
Because all data in Business Social Network are open and orders, there’s possible to make deep
market, business and social researches. If the Network would be popular, the result of such
researches will have higher accuracy, than, for instance, social polls.
Community opportunities
Network members could make Communities. These Communities could reflect real unions and
organizations, and give the information about them. Within each Community it could be
Oleh Rozvadovskyy oleh.rozvadovskyy@gmail.com

2. created forum for discussing, and also platform for making some decisions that do not need
immediate participation of top-managers of companies.
Possible risks and their solutions
Privacy
Some companies would not like to show the information about their commercial relations for
all other. Some of such businesses dodge the taxes, some else has such tough competition that
could ruin its activity, if they open their contacts.
Such suggestions are unsubstantiated because the Business Social Network is just the
reflection, but not the substitute of real relations. Accordingly, network members could
themselves form content and make contacts. If they don’t want to open some information,
they could have the right not to place it in Network.
B2C - business
Business Social Network suits well for companies that interact with other companies, or with
expert institutions (B2B, E2B, B2E markets). But such Network is inconvenient for businesses,
cooperating with final consumers or with individuals.
This problem could be partly solved by making connections with distributors of goods or
services, who sales it to final consumers.
This problem could be fully solved by integration the Business Social Network with individual
social network, whose members could have the opportunity to make some type of connections
with B2C companies.
Potential competitors
There’s high probability that till the end of 2009 there will be created first networks like offered
one. There are some projects, which however don’t have high popularity:
 Facebook Business (www.facebook.com/business) – service of individual social network
Facebook, that let the companies create their own accounts profiles in the network and
communicate with final consumers. Disadvantage of this service is absence of multi-type
connections – there could be essentially just ‘friends’, like in personal social networks.
Besides that, the brand Facebook, according to many experts, is perceived as the
entertainment tool, but not business.
 LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) – this social network allows to make corporate profiles, that
are essentially the groups of individual profiles, connected together. The service is oriented
on publishing the vacancies and job search. Multi-type connections are absent.
 Yury Lifshits (www.yury.name) – alumni of St.Petersburg State University, currently
working at Yahoo! Research. He has his own business-network project, which would allow
the companies to create connections among each other as well as with final consumers. Its
disadvantage is that all connections are based on friendship, like in personal networks. At
the same time final consumers could be the clients of the companies. Potential
disadvantage is also Yury Lifshits’ regarding his network not the reflection of real relations,
but the very real relations, that is substitute of offline relations. This business-network is
currently only on the stage of designing.
Oleh Rozvadovskyy oleh.rozvadovskyy@gmail.com