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I’ve spent the last few years fairly well engaged in the various social networking sites and have been using live chat programmes for even longer.

There is no doubt that generally people like to know other people’s stuff and keep in touch, however strong or loose the connection might be.  The explosion of sites such as facebook, twitter and linked in have created a media vehicle that is not only instantaneous but is also hugely rich in “interesting” content.

I say “interesting” and I mean it, although there is obviously some filtration of what I deem this to be compared to my 18yr old niece for example.  Nevertheless, my niece and I share a lot of common contacts and we both seem to comment on their information, news and interests.

Now, imagine having a facebook just for your company.  Imagine having a Linked-In set up to develop the networks inside your business.  Hugely beneficial or potentially damaging?

The way I see it (and this is just my view), most of the development of individuals and teams I do with organisations often carries a common performance issue – not enough sharing of best practice and not enough time taken out to maintain working relationships and networks.  Yet, so often I see examples of situations where one person has faced a similar situation or issue to another yet they never thought to share it until it became obvious in a training session or development activity. Why? Because much of the time there is no “desire” or “impetus” to do so.

So how can we change this?  Well, it may require a bit of a leap of faith and some pretty good policy management but I think corporate facebooks and linked-ins present a real opportunity.  An opportunity to make some real leaps and bounds in our corporate networking, sharing of news, knowlegde, support, resource and countless other benefits besides.  We already have things like lotus notes databases and intranet sites that try to do this in a fashion but I haven’t seen a really successful example of one yet.

So, my challenge to you reading this – Do you you of one such system?  Have you seen it in use?  Do you use this within your current organisation?  Is this indeed an opportunity for some budding entrepreneur?

Give your comments, let me know your thoughts and views, get involved.