Everyone's On Facebook

I woke up this morning to a nice little story on ReadWriteWeb on the prevalence on Web 2.0 applications on company systems.  FaceTime Communications, a security provider, did a live traffic survey of applications on company servers, and found that everyone, yes, everyone, is involved in Web 2.0 in some way.

FaceTime Communications, the makers of hardware solutions for security, management, and compliance, have collected live traffic data from more than 80 mid to large commercially deployed networks worldwide - data representing the daily web-based activities of more than 100,000 corporate workers. At the same time, they surveyed I.T. managers on a number of topics, including how many Web 2.0 applications they believed were in use on their networks. They then compared the two sets of findings. The conclusion? On a day-to-day basis, it seems I.T. managers don't know what their employees are doing - or what web apps they're using.

Interesting enough, of the surveyed IT managers, only 60% thought some application was on their users computers.  There's a lot more information at the link (written by Sarah Perez).

What does this mean for recruiters?  It means that if you don't know how to message people on the platform they use, you're missing out on the ability to contact them at all.  We make the mistake of looking at LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and others as just sourcing tools.  That's part of it, but the users you find on these networks don't necessarily respond to traditional email or even phone sourcing.  If you're not figuring out these tools as messaging platforms, you're not using them very well.

Of course this is all self-serving, as I sell products that teach you how to connect, market, and sell using Web 2.0 tools, but the reason I started doing so was no one was stepping up and showing how. We just talked about why, or made grand proclamations about how social networking was transforming recruiting.

Social networking is not transforming recruiting.  It's transforming the way we work.  It's touching every aspect of business and our social lives, and we have no choice but to catch up with the public.