In 2006, Chicago-based Starcom MediaVest Group deployed an online social network to connect the 200 executives attending its global meeting in Rome. Little did they know, it was the germ of a network that would soon grow to be more than 10 times larger.

SMV Global's Rome meeting network, designed by introNetworks, allowed attendees to create online profiles describing their strengths, challenges, experience, and responsibilities, as well as some personal interests. The executives could search for other attendees with similar characteristics and connect via e-mail before, during, and after the meeting.

Seth Romine, vice president and global director of knowledge management at SMV Group, says that the event network was so impressive that the company decided to deploy it companywide in an effort to better connect its 5,800 employees spread out in 67 countries. After one year, without a mandate in place, about 50 percent of the workforce had opted in.

Employee and customer communities are hot, says Mike Walsh, CEO at San Francisco-based Leverage Software, which began deploying social networks for meetings in 2003, back when the players in the market could be counted on one hand. “What's happened in the last two years, especially last year, is that we're developing more ongoing customer communities. These are sometimes launched in conjunction with an event and are intended to live on, or we launch the ongoing community, and when events come up, they are incorporated into the social networking site.” Event-only networks used to be 100 percent of Leverage's business, but now just 20 percent of the networks they develop are that narrow, he says.

SMV hasn't ruled out using a social network specifically to connect meeting attendees, but at this point, it's focusing on building the companywide network. Romine notes that a number of subgroups and forums have developed within the network, linking employees with shared interests and projects. The subgroups have community leaders, as well as listservs, RSS feeds, or other shared content.

Changing Players

The ways in which companies use social networks are evolving, and so are the players. Just a few years ago, introNetworks, Leverage, and BDMetrics were the key companies marketing meeting-specific social networks, but new tools are flooding the space. The rush started with the launch of EventMingle in 2006, followed by Eventvue (August 2007), Crowdvine for Conferences (November 2007), A2Z's networkNow (December 2007), Pathable (April 2008), and EventMatch (December 2008).

The systems' capabilities are broadening, too. At their core, they provide a way for meeting attendees, speakers, and exhibitors to find one another. Rather than roaming receptions and exhibits in hopes of running into good contacts, sales leads, or friends, meeting-goers can search a database of attendee profiles to find people, then contact them using an internal e-mail system. (Most of the systems also recommend attendees whom the user might want to meet.) The networks typically go live well before the face-to-face event and stay up long after attendees are back home, allowing a meeting's footprint to extend beyond the few days that attendees are together.

What's new is that many of the tools now offer mobile versions, allow subgroups to form, and have made it easy for profiles to include links to a range of online content. For example, many profiles can now link to an attendee's blog or to content on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or other sites. Some can be personalized with videos or music files, or downloadable documents.

You Better Believe It

If you think your attendees aren't using social technologies, consider the pace of change documented in an October 2008 white paper by Forrester Research Inc. called “The Growth of Social Technology Adoption.” According to Forrester's study, three out of four U.S. adults with online access now use social tools monthly. That's up from 56 percent in 2007.

The Web 2.0 activities Forrester tracked ranged from writing or reading blogs to watching or uploading user-created videos to writing an online review. But even when researchers looked specifically at what they termed “joiner activities” — visiting or maintaining a profile on a social networking site — they also found big increases. The percentage of U.S. online adults who participate in a social network at least monthly (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on) has jumped from about 24 percent in 2007 to about 34 percent in 2008. And the percentage who maintain a profile went from 20 percent in 2007 to about 28 percent in 2008.

Don't assume your attendees are too old to be part of this trend: Forrester reports that “one of the most striking trends in our new data was this: Older consumers now participate much more in social media than they did last year.” Only about 12 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds participated in social networking sites in 2007 versus 24 percent in 2008.

The Long Engagement

But whether attendees are young or old, or the technology is slick or basic, a social networking system has to be promoted and nurtured. Mark Sylvester, co-founder of introNetworks, which has deployed 250 networks since the company launched in 2003, says adoption “is not a technology problem. It's a business problem. What we're finding is that you need a community manager who will tell people it exists and make sure you're serving the audience. You need to know what the audience wants to know about each other, what questions and keywords will help them find each other, what challenges they are having with their businesses. You need someone who can think like the community.”

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, agrees that marketing an event-based social network is vital. “The biggest issue is trying to engage people before they come to the event. There's no prior history or experience to do so, and the danger is that only a few people participate fully beforehand, lessening the likelihood that the system will work. If it's deployed as an afterthought, it won't work. But if the network becomes a centerpiece for the attendee experience, with the full backing of event organizers, then it can be incredibly powerful.

“In many ways, [meeting social networks] are a great place for companies to start experimenting,” Li says. Similar to SMV's experience, Li sees it as “a natural course” for a company to extend an event network to an ongoing network. “That's how Microsoft's Channel 9 community got started over four years ago,” Li says. “It was an outgrowth of their annual developers conference and fed a desire for them to stay connected.”

Not Another Network?

As exciting as the idea is of making conference networking less random, event-based networks have their detractors. Many are focused on the “not another network” problem. According Forrester's white paper, 74 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and more than half of 25- to 34-year-olds participate in social networking sites, and that can result in a kind of community overkill.

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