Social networking for the enterprise

I've gathered together a few posts about enterprise social networking software applications.

"Social networking makes a play for the enterprise,

Posted by Dion Hinchcliffe - ZDNET

"Social networking has clearly hit the big time and is demonstrating both the widespread interest, and the possibilities, of online social communities where people come together to exchange information, develop interpersonal relationships, and build long-term social networks.

This is certainly part of the promise of Web 2.0; a two-way Web powered by people and the information they bring to the table (this latter piece is something I like to call BYOC, or bring-your-own-content.)

However, a very real problem is that many of these things are often an actual distractionfrom the work that people are supposed to be conducting in the workplace; the very last thing that enterprises want these days is a MySpace-style time waster that disrupts business.

And that's where corporate version of social networks will have to tread a careful line. For example, Visible Path doesn't allow the creation of home pages or user profiles and instead builds networks out of existing business artifacts, like e-mails and other information sources. In this way, social networks are constructed out of the very fabric of the business instead of things that might take away from it, like a blog, chat room, or interest group."

Learn about our solutions, or read our blog or, check out this enterprise 2.0 demo of a social networking application.

Dion, "But an important challenge that social networking is that minimizing the personal aspects of corporate social networks will also end up limiting their usefulness. Good social networks provide ways for people to create just the sort of information to create useful affinities or ways to find the people you're interested in networking with.This is something I call the social surface area (see visualization below) but I think the potential for this in the enterprise are clearly still there, once initial concerns are overcome. Thus, the social media companies that find good ways to increase a user's social surface area without disrupting the business itself will tend to be most successful."

"MySpace for the Office," By Steve Rosenbush, Business Week

"Make no mistake: Young people love to socialize on the Web. Tens of millions of teens and young adults use sites like News Corp.'s MySpace or Facebook to trade messages on home pages loaded with blogs, photos, and music."

"Web 2.0 meets the enterprise", By Martin LaMonica Staff Writer, CNET News.com

"New ideas in consumer technology are rapidly creeping into the design and marketing of software aimed at corporations. For example, Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and AJAX are starting to show their potential behind corporate firewalls, analysts said."

Read more about social network software in the enterprise here.