Social networking joins up BT - 03 Apr 2008 - Computing

“It lets us see people’s skills and competencies, allowing us to create communities for addressing specific challenges.”

The internal network has also made it easier to handle the growing need for co-operation across different work disciplines, said Bross.

“As you start to see the formation of ecosystems within the supply chain that can improve your business operation, you often have to move across industries to find the right solution.

“For example, something that worked well in the finance systems could provide benefits to the pharmaceutical sector as well,” he said.

“We have created a massive wiki to help create an understanding between people around the globe, so that everyone is working with the same definition of terms,” said Bross.

I don’t think I will ever be able to turn Sharepoint into something as interesting as Facebook but the more I think of it the more I feel that’s where I’d like to go.

The more I look at the sites we create at work the more I think they fail simply to engage with people. The look more like the static websites people used to throw up in the 80’s with a list of links and an About Me page.

The idea of putting people in charge of micro-sites is a good idea. Not telling them how to make their sites interesting (or even fun), how to attract and keep an audience or how to promote them is a serious failure.