Enterprise Social Networks

Don Park paints a picture of blog and wiki convergence in the following quote:

“Imagine posts and comments flowing from blogs to wikis like the way streams feed into lakes. Got the picture yet? Now think of a blog category as a wiki page. The picture changes so that the blog becomes a mountain and categories become the streams running down the side of the mountain in all directions toward wikis into which streams from other mountains also feed into.”

I certainly would enjoy seeing the reality of Don’s picture. However, I would also like to expand on his canvas (and borrow his metaphor too ;-)

In my picture I would like to see the integration of blog and wiki-style features in enterprise software such as Document Management Systems, Content Management Systems, and of course Collaboration and Knowledge Management Systems.

For example, take the new Microsoft Office 2003 System…

Imagine if the Office System supported trackbacks, pingbacks, blogrolls and wiki style page creation that was orchestrated by SharePoint Services or even a scaled-down version of BizTalk Server.

Combine this with a version of Outlook that comes with a built-in aggregator like NewsGator and supports an auto-discovery social networking feature based on FOAF.

Ok, maybe I’m turning Don’s picture into a Jackson Pollock, but I do feel there is great potential in providing a distributed collaboration and social networking aware framework that seamlessly fits into the enterprise and does not take users out of the applications they use on a daily basis.