What Facebook and Wikileaks mean to business strategy

Social Internet and Information availability will disrupt all businesses.

Most businesses are going to be reshaped by the social capacities provided by today’s Internet, this is Mark Zuckerberg vision and he’s right. Photo and games are already different industries, but all verticals will follow. (See interview of Facebook founder and CEO at the Web 2.0 Summit 2010: "A Conversation with Mark Zuckerberg").

The Wikileaks episode also reminds us that hard facts will always be available for consumers and voters.

So how should business leaders and investors react to that?

Imagine you are considering buying a book, a new smartphone, booking a hotel, looking for a dentist,… Instead of reading reviews from journalists you trust less and less (after all, they do this for a living, don’t they ?), you may prefer to have accurate data points and feedback from your friends. How about having at hand advice and experience from those you trust and know well ? How about having reliable datapoints to help you in your decision process? Facebook exponential growth and valuation clearly tell us what you prefer.

My recommendations for businesses would be:

At the strategy level:

· focus on doing very well whatever you do, make sure it’s meaningful to the market. If you don’t have the best product/service, work to get there, partner to do so, or do something different.

· focus on satisfying your customers which means having a relation with them (especially those that make you earn money and that can recommend you).

Without this, social economy can only accelerate your fall.

At the operational/marketing level:

· invest in Facebook and others to socially enable sales, communication and marketing (either using their social infrastructure or finding another smart way),

· create a unique post sales experience and invest in it, make it social

It sounds simplistic, it means very different things depending on the vertical you are in, but there is a tsunami coming up and everybody would better get prepared.