Help Or Hindrance?

Such has been the explosion of social networking that newborn babies are now being set up with a facebook account so proud mums and dads can take the concept of ‘show and tell’ to a whole new level.

Recently, this burningpants correspondent’s cousin became a first-time father to a baby girl. Just two days later, her uncle had sent around a link to a facebook page he’d created for his niece.

Whether you view that as totally inappropriate or simply a sign of the times, there’s no escaping the fact that a new generation now exists that will have never known life before social networking.

In fact, many of today’s youth have never known life before the computer.

Social networking has changed the way we express ourselves, allowing us to make personal statements about ourselves in an extremely impersonal way.

So-called ‘status updates’ on facebook range from the benign “John had cornflakes for breakfast” to the ridiculous “Carly wants to kill someone”.

Seriously, do you really think anyone cares what you had for breakfast? Or that you happen to be exhibiting psychopathic tendencies on a particular day?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace… as their popularity grows, so too does the amount of time spent (wasted?) browsing the networks of friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

But are these sites a help or a hindrance?

Recent reports have suggested financial advisers are missing out on business leads by ignoring social media avenues.

It’s true that the ‘communities’ created via social networking sites can be beneficial from a business point of view, particularly when it comes to scouting for potential employees, building relationships with contacts and identifying new clients or target markets.

Generation Y and Z live their lives almost entirely online, making social media an obvious channel for advisers looking to diversify their client base and ensure the future stability of their practices as the pre-Boomer and Boomer segments shrink.

Forward-thinking companies have identified social networking as a free marketing tool and are using the sites to their full advantage.

While they might be time thieves, the commercial benefits of such sites are too good to ignore.