I'd like your take on "social software" and business. Is there a place for LinkedIn-like social networking, wikis, blogs, forums, Facebook/MySpace, SecondLife, Twitter, Flickr, and so on in business? Or is this just another thing that leads to employee "not"-working?
I keep thinking that in here somewhere, there is an opportunity to enable, catalyze my company's collaborative and innovation processes.
- Connector
Dear Connector ...
I can certainly see an internal use for social-network-like capabilities. Large companies that want to promote internal knowledge sharing have tried to create "communities of interest" for a long time before LinkedIn opened its virtual doors for business, and some of the social networking tools could prove useful in this regard - especially internal blogs and wikis.
That isn't the same thing as employees visiting SecondLife for recreational purposes when they are supposed to be writing code, of course, and I don't think the world is ready for an internal version of SecondLife to help accomplish the knowledge-sharing goal.
The avatars alone would have too much potential to create much more trouble than they're worth (you can just see a crazed sysadmin hacking in to replace every manager's chosen avatar with a Dilbert-esque Pointy-Haired Boss).
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on July 2, 2008 06:54 AM
