We’re seeing these “pockets” of social networks popping up to - gasp - the surprise of our IT and comms people. The good news is that it’s still scattered.

My question is - not unlike in the advent of e-mail - there has to be a framework for appropriate use. Where does governence and communications about usage expectations come in? Who owns it? Has anyone out there tackled this and developed really neat blog/ bulletin board/ meeting room guidelines?

I thought one of Niall’s best points came on the FIR interview, when he talked about how employees are using these tools whether companies find ways to integrate them or not, so a company that doesn’t find a way for employees to create collaborative content are going to lose tremendous amount of information.

The other interesting topic is the continual complaints from executives about a “loss of control of the message.” When are communicators get it that control is a myth. It never existed. Setting up systems that aggregate and facilitate is a much more effective philosophy both in terms of information flow and building a healthy culture.

You might want to check out what IBM is doing with its Dogear
application. It is a social bookmarking tool (like del.icio.us) integrated into the compny intranet.