Social networking software for business

Dear Bob ...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

Dear Bob ...

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