Understanding Users of Online Social Networks
If the ongoing social networking revolution has you
scratching your head and asking, "Why do people spend time on this?" and
"How can my company benefit from the social network revolution?" you've
got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan
Piskorski. Only difference: Piskorski has spent years studying
users of online social networks (SN) and has developed surprising
findings about the needs that they fulfill, how men and women use these
services differently, and how Twitter—the newest kid on the block—is
sharply different from forerunners such as Facebook and MySpace. He has
also applied many of the insights to help companies develop strategies
for leveraging these various online entities for profit.
Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, who often goes by Misiek, is an Associate
Professor of Business Administration and Marvin Bower Fellow in the
Strategy Unit at the Harvard Business School (Professor Piskorski's website).
Professor Piskorski's current research examines how firms can harness
the power of social networks together with innovative organizational
designs to build and implement sustainable strategies. He is also an
expert on why and how people use on-line social networks, both in the U.S.
and abroad, and how firms can use them to increase viral product
adoption. He has also applied many of these insights to large
organizations as they seek to become more agile and use social networks
to execute their strategies. Misiek’s previous research examined the
role of social networks in the venture capital industry.
His research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly and
Social Forces and cited in The New York Times, Business 2.0, and
Investors Business Daily. He serves or has served on the editorial
boards of several academic journals, including Administrative Science
Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, Management Science and
Organization Science.
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