Peer to peer networking almost seems to take on a life force on it’s own, creating an inexorable momentum, a tidal wave in front of which corporations must bow. Or get sterner leadership.

When one company attempted to prohibit it’s staff from using social networking site FaceBook, a minor mutiny quickly reversed their position.

“Allen & Overy (A&O) has been forced into an embarrassing climb-down after the firm’s IT department was bombarded with staff complaints following a firmwide ban on social networking website Facebook.

IT chiefs took the decision to block access to the website due to concerns that staff downloading videos from the site would compromise the performance of A&O’s IT systems.

However, a series of complaints from staff across the firm led IT director Dave Burwell to email the entire London office on Tuesday (22 May) saying the ban had been lifted.

He said: “Given that there has been a strong reaction to the blocking and that Facebook is used by many people for networking – for business purposes as well as social – we are going to open up access to the site again.”
(source)

The corporate world, indeed every business owner is dancing this two step as they try to calibrate company policy to address the impact of social networking on every level. Indeed, the medium provides a powerful business tool, but I am hard pressed to see FaceBook as fertile grounds unless that is your specific target market. Policy needs to be quite firm. No matter what the ultimate benefits are to social networking tools, the subversive side of their capabilities should be noted. (Google “Digg  mutiny”  to see an example.)