Many think Facebook will replace e-mail. What other business apps might it augment or replace?

Remember MySpace and how it was declared the King of the Hill. Today, nowhere on the radar. Let's take the hubris around Facebook with a grain of salt. IF Facebook doesn't get it's act together on privacy, security and its business model for blatantly monetizing its members and their private information, it will go the way of MySpace. Regardless if it does a $B IPO this year.

Actually, Antoine, email has almost completely replaced paper mail for many people, which is why the US Post Office (for one) is in such dire straits. Other than packages and unsolicited mail, I receive almost all correspondence and news digitally.

But back to the original question... As Christine notes, using Facebook as a communication and collaboration platform inside organizations is fraught with risks - and in my view should never be considered as a potential application. That said, and as Ryan noted, there are many platforms and tools that have similar features and can be deployed in ways that offer better ways for employees to communicate and collaborate than email. I shared some of my thoughts on this subject after the furor in response to the comments by the CEO of Atos about ending the use of email internally by 2013. Here's a link to the post for folks who are interested:

http://www.sminorgs.net/2011/12/the-end-of-email-reflections-from-a-digital-e...

Thank you Courtney. Great post in fact. I follow you.

I understand what T.Breton proposed for Atos Origin. I think the question is: Will social media make email obsolete?
Will an inovation replace always something? Even if US post office sees its activity reduced, the paper mail is not dead.

In our case, the mode of personal or professional communication will be more multiple: the writing was added to the word, the printing to writing, the phone to printing, the email to phoning, and now, social media.
We should consider that organizations must multiply communication channels (internal and external) and not to consider that any replacement will occur.

Your point, Courtney, is more interesting than the question :)
What T.Breton is proposing is a renewal of work organization and collaboration. Agility, adaptiveness are basic targets, beyond profits, but the result is a true change in practicing work collaboration.
Social media in organization is not just about "replacing", but about a new era where "networking", "knowledge workers", "adaptiveness" will be leading concepts, and the number of channels will just be an additional variable – emails will have a stake (and are clearly overused today).

To extend this discussion, read my Chief architect, Max J Pucher's blog (you probably know already)
http://isismjpucher.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/adaptive-case-management-basic-f...
http://maxjpucher.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/social-bpm-handbook-2011/

Facebook has already replaced a good deal of e-mail traffic, primarily those e-mail threads with family and friends. Trends are that the e-mail box is transitioning to be the electronic filing cabinet - travel and business confirmation e-mails, financial trasactions from banks, investments as well as ebay and paypal transactions.

As Facebook and/or another social platforms are adopted, I would expect the next wave will be to incorporate and syndicate out these transactional confirmations to these platforms.

As this develops, mobile access to these from social profile confirmations will need to be considered as businesses and their IT organizations tackle this on the horizon.

It is a known fact that any type of business cannot survive in the competitive market without promoting itself. Promotion of products, services and businesses can be done via social media marketing. Facebook is the leading social media network with the largest user base in the world and it has a variety of applications, but which one you choose depends on what type of business you have to offer to consumers. We can utilize Facebook applications to push businesses next level. One such app is the Facebook Marketplace where one can buy or sell anything.

Regards,
Business Gifts

Agree a little with Jacek, for bigger corporations - Facebook is too dangerous. Anyone just has to look at the security holes and the lack of privacy in Facebook to make you worry about using it for personal use - never mind for corporate emails, etc.

However, Social Media as a tool is something that could replace most email. Internal social networks - like what SocialText and others provide - may be the way companies communicate - through blogs and tweets rather than through emails and meetings.

My last company started to use SocialText as their social media platform internally, and for the "Tech" people like myself - we adapted and started to use it for everything. The rest of the company (it was an insurance firm) was slower to adapt - mainly because of the "fear" of "social media" in general.

Now this is not a endorsement of SocialText itself (I found the program lacking in functionality, documentation, and was an overall pain to deal with) - However - they had a great idea of creating social networking "pods" that were private and secure that companies could use for internal communications (and could later "adapt" for some external communications as well).

Ryan
http://MassachusettsWebDesigns.com

It is interesting that you went from "replacing" to "augment 'or' replace" in your question - because I would agree that Facebook has augmented email, but is nowhere near to replacing it. That said, I can't think of a single significant "business app" that will ever be "replaced" by Facebook.

Email will always have its place in the business environment. I think Facebook messages are like chat on steroid. They are perfect for social media and also for customers to discuss certain topics related to the products/services.

In Borneosoft CRM (http://www.borneosoft.com), email is placed in a context of other modules. Users can sends email directly from contact and the email conversations stays in that contact (http://www.borneosoft.com/_videos/ContextEmail/). Email as conversation medium is too valuable to be replaced or removed from our everyday life.

Regards,
Luke

Facebook and other social networks can play a role in facilitating business and personal communication. But let's keep the difference between active and passive communication in mind. If I want to share my holiday celebration photos or discuss gifts I got with my Aunt Flo, I can "post" using Facebook, Google Plus or another network. I might Tweet some pictures to share with lots of people in real time.

However, soliciting the latest draft of a proposal from my Director or sending a change of address notice to my cousin is something I am going to do with an email.

When the message is not time critical or designed as a one to many, posting to a network such as Facebook is appropriate,

When the message is one to one, or time critical, one should still rely on email.

I do not think anything can replace email in the short to medium term. Just as email has not replaced paper mail.
Do not see things this way: Facebook, Twitter are new medias, and in this respect, they broaden possibilities. It must be assumed they are added instead of replaced, and each take their place in the area of communication between human beings.

Concretely, FB will replace (it replaces now) some type of email communication. Twitter does too.
The scope of these two media is expected to expand but, in my opinion, emails will remain ...

I was hoping to glean a few helpful business apps from this conversation. For me, social media has become a Pandora's box of options. I know that Facebook causes many people to twitch about whether or not it is useful for business. From my corporate experience, Facebook has added far more customer activity than any other medium. Consumers are sharing their links, photos and ideas. Facebook makes it so easy for us to interact with our customers in real time.

Facebook will not replace email. In fact Facebook & other social platforms have made email more important. For many of us, email is a central clearing house for information as each platform seems to have a unique method of communication; email is ubiquitous.

I do believe that Facebook will replace LinkedIn (if it hasn’t already) in terms of the best place to network with potential talent for your organization. Recent data from Jobs2Web indicates that Facebook is a more effective source of hiring efficiency with 1 person in every 400 applies getting hired versus LinkedIn with 1 person in every 1354 applies. Further, in terms of sheer numbers of people, Facebook at 800 million trumps LinkedIn 130 million or so. All we have to do is to figure out how to engage, nurture and build relationships effectively on Facebook (but that is another conversation).

Facebook replacing email is absurd. For one thing, with facebook, you totally lose the "privacy" factor that is needed to have a proper conversation. Even if you're talking networking, there is only so much value in social networking but when it comes down to the core of whether or not a business would be successful, facebook is a mere skeleton with no real substance.

There are far too many issues regarding Facebook as a platform to imagine it as a "replacement" for secure, private email. The very factors that enable it as a marketing an promotion vehicle make it a very poor choice for secure business communications. Those who have dealt with Facebook development know how unexpected and ill-timed code changes in Facebook con create serious problems.

It is a known fact that any type of business cannot survive in the competitive market without promoting itself. Promotion of products, services and businesses can be done via social media marketing. Facebook is the leading social media network with the largest user base in the world and it has a variety of applications, but which one you choose depends on what type of business you have to offer to consumers. We can utilize Facebook applications to push businesses next level. One such app is the Facebook Marketplace where one can buy or sell anything.

Regards,
Business Gifts