Earlier I had blogged about how social networking is taking the world by storm.. adding on to the same thought process I find the concept of enterprise social networking having a lot of potential.

What is enterprise social networking?  In simple terms a controlled social network within a company which will enable employees to connect, share, network and collaborate much better.

Do we need it? Yes, and I think the importance of an internal network is going to increase as Distributed Development grows into being a more than common phenomenon. Imagine a team scattered across timezones and how much you could leverage something like this to help create an atmosphere of a close-knit team.

What remains to be seen is what constitutes “a successfull enterprise network”, and would giving up on key items such as too much personal information and emphasis on security keep the network viral or make it just another redundant site which fades away with time.

…  I will surely have more research and info coming along on this topic soon.

Links:

There was a great article published a few weeks ago “Social networking makes a play in enterprise: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=33“

Also, one of the players in the market i found quite interesting is Visible path : https://www.visiblepath.com/registration/vpHomePage.action

(wikipedia also has some great stuff on enterprise social software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_social_software )