The contemporary world is an exciting place to be in, with technology opening up new avenues and so many mediums of interaction and socialising now being made available just at the click of a mouse. With the emergence of Web2.0 and the possibilities that it offers, the phenomenon of social networking has gained traction. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and the like have found much favour with the urban population. It’s interesting to see how this concept has evolved over the years, as these sites are not being used anymore just as a way of meeting and keeping in touch with friends, but also fostering business.

A lot of enterprises of late have been looking to integrate social networking as part of the work culture to promote a healthy work environment, as well as innovation and collaboration. Sony Electronics is one such company that has taken the positive aspect of social networking in helping add value to the company’s overall goals and business objectives.

When it comes to a company like Sony, which has a consumer base across the world and with the proliferation of internet now in the remotest corner of countries, it is but evident that a lot customers would log onto Sony’s official website with a view to buying products. Taking off from there and seeing how well this worked, the company decided to start social networking with its customers. Says Drew Martin, SVP and CIO, Information Systems and Solutions Of America, Sony Electronics, "Sites like Wikipedia and the like are amazing things to have online. People have brilliant ideas and its technology that brings those ideas to life. We are social networking with our consumers, if they have to something to say on what should be there in Sony’s next product or suggestions on how some products can be improved, then we definitely want to listen to that and some of these social networking technologies help us do that."

Apart from reaching the masses, Sony is using social networking internally for collaboration. A lot of what is done in the office is working together and figuring out how to do things better. At Sony they almost have internal Facebooks and Myspaces for employees, listing out what the person is at Sony, what his/her interests are and connecting them with other employees so that they can interact and come up with some good ideas.

Social networking has been accepted very well at the electronics company. An interesting story of how well social networking is working for Sony is that of an incident of wildfires in San Diego when many people had to evacuate their homes. It was a chaotic situation, but the people in the other Sony office who were responsible for social networking technologies helped the situation. The employees who were affected by the wildfire put their workspace in a blog and let people find out over the weekend, which forms they needed to fill out for disaster relief, find out where the other people who were evacuated were and also set up a donation marketplace.

This same technology and principle is applied to business as well. At Sony, if a new product is being designed or a flawless supply chain has to be put into place, the same technologies are brought to bear. It facilitates mass collaboration.

Concludes Drew, "Social networking is not just being used internally, but we are also using it to interact with big customers like Best Buy. There used to be a lot of e-mails and a lot of flights, but now a workspace has been created where people can come in with a sense of security and think of great ideas and discuss them online."