One of the more remarkable things about the social networking aspects of BLOGs is that topics are bantered about- exciting new technologies are discovered (or re-discovered), there are any number of problems that these technologies can solve, and then their true benefits and deficiencies are revealed. We are now getting to this later stage with Web 2.0.

There are still many who are shouting from the rooftops about how Web 2.0 technologies can, and indeed are, changing the landscape of the internet- as well they should. However, we believe these shouts should be somewhat more focused. Blogging, RSS, AJAX, and the rest, all have a place where they can best be exploited, but you have to know where to draw the line.

Alternatively, the corporate world will have to change it's mindset as well (to a certain degree). In order to realize the value of Web 2.0 technologies, specifically the social networking aspects, companies will have to encourage employees to contribute- and contribute the right content. Some of the established corporate methodologies of knowledge capture will have to be relaxed as well. Dion Hinchcliffe discusses this in his post Being Practical with Web 2.0 Thinking. The best quote on this topic is:

"enterprises [do not] need to throw their management and control structures away. But they could sure loosen them up a bit in the right places. And achieving balance here is something that the successful companies will do, through trial and error."
We very much believe in this line of thinking. We even take it a step further: in order for the enterprise space to understand the value that Web 2.0 brings, the benefits need to be clearly identified, and the software itself should facilitate the features which provide that value. Where there are ambiguous business processes, the system should enforce best practices. For example:

• Meeting software should require an agenda to be created
• Creating WIKI content should help to classify that content for easy search retrieval
• Reports should be precreated, but customizable to the specialized needs of a user

One could easily go overboard in those features, but the key is to strike that balance between dynamic, interactive features that guide a user through an application, and non-intuitive elements that provide little business value and hinder the user more than they help.

There are a number of us who have a passion for realizing the potential of knowledge- in all forms. Those of us here at BrainKeeper have made the gathering, categorizing, and serving of information via the internet our career for many years. So, we are very interested and excited as to where some of the more modern software conventions are taking us. We are most interested in concepts such as:

• Social collaboration software (such as WIKIs) applied to the corporate environment
• Software as a Service and its increased adoption- Web 2.0 as is relates to a dynamic, rich user experience
• The maturation of information delivery methods, such as RSS, ATOM, and BLOGGING

We'll take a look at the first topic here, and address others in future posts.

A good number of us have witnessed several trends developing in the area of online communication. Sites such as MySpace and LinkedIn have proven the value (or at least the interest) of personal online collaboration, and similar initiatives are constantly in the works to capture a part of this 'social networking' concept.

Why is it, then, that the tools developed for communication within the corprate sector have not been heralded or adopted with nearly the zeal that these 'personal' sites have? Where this has even been recognized as a valuable initiative, companies are turning to homegrown knowledge bases and open source WIKI products to solve issues of intra-corporate knowledge transfer, maintenance and retention. These solutions have the potential to address the needs for which they were created, but most implementations end up being nothing more than a check box in the to-do list of a CIO, or they sit dormant after a lackluster kickoff- or the saddest situation: they are only used by a fraction of the employees and the potential is never realized.

There are some more structured, fee-based solutions available- with more being developed, that hope to capitalize on this opportunity. While some are close, we have not yet seen a system that is simple enough for the majority, while having the full set of features needed to address the challenges that face companies who need online, distributed, interactive collaboration. I doubt we will see a 'MyCompanySpace' site anytime soon, but whoever can provide a complete solution will have quite a breakthrough.