I love it when things just happen, especially when they fly inthe face of the predictions of pundits and experts. The real powerof network computing, we were told, was going to be the ability toharness multiple computers and processors and create vast computinggrids that would have more muscle than the biggest Cray money couldbuy.

So, what have we gotten from distributed grid computing? Westill haven't found ET, and the last time I looked, SETI@home stillwas looking for him or her or it. We have managed to crack someserious encryptions utilizing a networked grid, and that is fun,but they all have been one-offs and take way too much time to be ofany practical use.

Grids have been used in software shops to distribute the load ofcreating the latest build. Distributed computing works, exists, andmay come into its own, but I have yet to see the really killerbusiness application that is built on a grid. What I have seen,though, is the incredible growth of online social networking asseen in the success of services such as MySpace and Facebook. Forthe moment, the apparent power of networked computers is theability for users to interact with one another. Yet I wouldn'twrite social networking off as the faddish toys of the teen andtwenty-something crowd. A specific social network service may beriding a short-lived wave of popularity, but the concept is solidand here to stay.

Six Degrees of Separation

The real power of network computing may turn out to be as aplace for various users to interact in various ways. Observe howsocial networks have increased in value over the last few years. In2005, the News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million. InOctober 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. InSeptember of this year, Microsoft's bid to acquire a five percentstake in Facebook puts a projected $10 billion value on the socialnetworking site. When real money talks, it is time to take socialnetworking seriously.

Is there some value for it in the business space? The fact is wealready are using network-based social networking tools in theworkplace. Things such as instant messaging, chat, e-mail, filesharing, blogs, discussion groups, and collaboration tools are allpart of the fabric of social networking and are currently used inbusiness settings. The piece that is missing is the one thatconnects users together through information and data stored intheir profile. Matching profile information provides the abilitywithin an organization to determine such things as:

o Who has expertise in a particular subject?

o Who knows someone else to whom you need to connect?

o Who knows whom to contact at another organization?

o Who knows a good Sushi restaurant in Hartford?

In short, a good social networking system functions as a sort ofvirtual neural network connecting disparate bits of information.Ready access to those bits of information makes the whole thingwork. I may have discovered a way to create all my TPA reports inhalf the time it used to take. Keeping that knowledge to myself maymake me appear and perform better, but it provides little benefitto the organization unless that knowledge is shared. A corporatelysanctioned and controlled social network is one way to share thatknowledge.

Old School Hurdles

I fully understand this concept can strike fear into the heartof corporate types. Blog, wikis, discussion groups, and personalWeb sites smack of individualism and are perceived asanti-corporate. When discussing blogs in the corporate environment,human resource managers are likely to raise the first objections."We can't allow individuals to post their opinions and thoughts onthe company intranet. We won't have any control over what they maysay." Hmmm . . . I thought 1984 was like 23 years ago.

I don't intend to make light of real issues regarding freespeech in the workplace, but I would like to address the mostcommon objections. We already have one issue (lack of control). Thesecond is the belief employees will waste too much time bloggingand chatting and networking.

The Waste Land

The fact is employees already waste a lot of time. A studysponsored by AOL and Salary.com found employees admit to wasting anaverage of two hours a day. A Microsoft study seemed to indicatemost workers provide only about three days of productive work in afive-day workweek. The biggest distraction was personal Internetuse for most respondents to these surveys. The next biggestdistraction was socializing with workers. Younger workers wastemore time than older workers. And get this: According to the AOLand Salary.com survey, "The three sectors of the economy in whichworkers wasted the most time were–in order–insurance, government,and education."

I do not intend to debate the validity of surveys or polls, butI think we all know people don't spend their entire workday inproductive work. And I suspect there is some upper limit toproductivity we can strive for. But unless your workers areshackled to a machine in an assembly line, you have less controlover productivity than you would like.

Sharing Is Good

Company-sponsored social networking tools may well replace thetime spent in nonproductive behavior with time spent in ways thatare productive to the organization, even if they are not directlyjob related. The company I work for promotes individual blogs. WhenI come across a particularly difficult or new problem and spendsome productive and billable time solving that problem, I amencouraged to post that information in my blog. That way whenanother employee encounters a similar or identical situation, aquick search across all those blogs returns a possible solution.You could even make a case for calling this part of an SOAenvironment. My knowledge is available across the enterprise and ispackaged (in my blog) for reuse.

What's Mine Is Mine–Not

This brings up another issue. Social networking is not justabout network tools. It is about culture. If the corporate cultureis not to share or collaborate, then we have another hurdle. If theactual or perceived value of employees is their specific knowledge,then employees may be reticent to share their knowledge. Accordingto this view, my only sense of job security may be I am the onlyperson in the entire enterprise who understands XYZ. If I sharethat information, then I am replaceable.

That kind of thinking is based on pre-industrial revolutionthinking. The village shoemaker always will have work becauseeveryone needs shoes. The only threat to his livelihood is anothershoemaker. We will find pockets of this type of thinking in anyorganization, but the best companies know encouraging sharing andcreative thinking provides much greater benefit than ivory towersilos of knowledge.

Manage–Not Restrict

Let's get back to one of our original objections to socialnetworking in the organization: lack of control. First of all, anyovertly inappropriate behavior is not to be tolerated whether thatbehavior is manifested as a blog entry or an offensive T-shirt.Employees will need to be managed and mentored, but electronicallyshackling an employee isn't managing. Most corporate IT departmentsare seen as restrictive–as in computer use policies that are just alist of things you can't do. Restricting employees does not promotecreativity; it creates people who learn how to survive within therestrictions. Permissive policies geared toward sharing informationand ideas tend to promote creativity. And creativity leads tobetter productivity for the organization as a whole.

I am not claiming social networking is going to transform theorganization overnight. Nor is it a panacea for all corporateissues. It is, however, a very real and viable phenomenon in ourculture and, as such, should be embraced or at least toleratedwithin the corporate culture. New generations of knowledge workersalready are using these types of tools. It only makes sense toextend that paradigm to the work space. Would you rather haveemployees complaining about the current healthcare plan on theirpersonal blogs or on ihatemycompany.org?

Nothing New Under the Sun–Redux

I suspect most readers of this magazine are using socialnetworking tools. More than 14 million professionals from variousindustries network through www.linkedin.com. LinkedIn's slogan is:"Relationships Matter." And indeed they do. What do our salesstaffs talk about? Building relationships. Social networking is allabout building relationships.

A few years back, my team created a little network applicationwhose purpose was to provide a central place where employees wouldplace information about our corporate customers. We had manyindividuals who would interact with clients, and we wanted tocapture all that knowledge so that when the next person was to callon that client, the collective information of the enterprise wasavailable. Unfortunately, very few people bothered to share theirknowledge, and that application was permanently recycled. Thatapplication was built on the old way of thinking–forcing employeesto go to a central location to share their knowledge. A well-oiledsocial network solution could provide a lot of that information bymatching up indexed knowledge, metadata, and user profiles.

Sales and business development staff have relied on networkingtools forever. In the past, those tools might have been a social orfraternal organization or a golf course or a shoebox full of indexcards. Today, that tool set includes the Internet and sites such asLinkedIn. Wouldn't it be nice if this also included a corporatesocial network, one that could inform a sales person regarding whoin the organization already has a relationship with a potentialclient–a relationship that can be exploited for additionalbenefit?

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a "technical preview" forMicrosoft Office Server 2007 called the Knowledge Network. (Thetechnical preview was officially closed in June 2007.) KnowledgeNetwork is an add-on to MOSS 2007 designed to "automate thediscovery of business relationships and subject matter expertise inthe network to provide vital business insights enabling users tomake better decisions more quickly." It provided a way to createpersonalized automated member profiles that were searchable anddiscoverable throughout the organization. Is it surprisingMicrosoft is interested in getting a piece of Facebook? I don'tknow whether Knowledge Network will be part of the next release ofSharePoint, but I would not be surprised if it were. I also wouldnot be surprised to see other social networking tools geared to thecorporate world.

Services such as Facebook and MySpace are not going to go away.Knowledge workers can be expected to use social networking servicesto enhance their personal lives. I see no compelling reason for whybusiness should not build on that cultural propensity to enhancethe business environment. It really is all about sharing warstories and experience around the water cooler or over a martini.All we are doing is replacing the mechanism. Anyway, water coolersare pass?, and martinis are bad for you.