Social Networking Within The Enterprise

Despite the media hype around social networking, it remains a consumer market phenomena. Most organizations struggle to identify what type of social networking applications might be possible within enterprise environments. This article provides a good list of examples that can spark a conversation between business and IT strategists.

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Comments

[christopher carfi]

hi, mike...thanks for the good words on the social networking piece. -c

[Peter de Haas]

Mike,
The problem often with using outside social networking tools (Plaxo for example) is that a lot of companies prevent employee data being stored in external systems. Privacy concerns in general maybe an issue with these types of solutions being used more broughtly in Enterprises.
For sure social networking adds a lot of value in the enterprise. I'm sure you are aware of Microsoft's efforts in this field with solutions such as Knowlegde Network, which relates your communication in Outlook to a number of 'Social Network pages' in SharePoint.

[Mike Gotta]

Peter -- agree totally on the use of external tools and privacy concerns but I thought the article was helpful to spark conversations around the categories of applications people can start considered.

Concerning Microsoft, Knowledge Network is a good start, MySite could really evolve into something quite unique -- some of what is being done with KN is similar in concept to past exertise location systems only now its being done more broadly and as a platform rather than an application -- IBM is also in this game with dogear and Fringe (a different approach but heading in the same direction re: social networking). What will be interesting will be the type of third party support emerges around both approaches...