From what I’ve seen, in the high tech industry segment, engineers have been using the network for social and business interaction for longer than almost any other community (look at usenet). Historically though, there has been a firm border between these systems and the “official” product development/PLM toolsets. Typically, the use of these networking tools for product development has been discouraged because of security and IP protection concerns (open source software being the exception).

What is interesting is that the border between enterprise tools and networking tools is now fuzzy, and getting fuzzier, yet companies are more concerned than ever with protecting their IP. So what you get is “underground” collaboration. I haven’t seen a solution yet that attempts to address these conflicting trends without requiring a lot of administrative overhead.

Pete

Although i believe the new generation, like my kids, are much more trained and familiar with social networking. They have hundreds of friends ……….

The more actual examples in working environments, the more you will see mgmt accept the idea of it.. “proof is in the pudding”

Otherwise, we will see some will have a jaded view of social networks because of what they see and hear at home with their kids.

There will be a fine line of “professional” level social networks and “personal” networks. There will certainly be overlap with contacts and tools, but the content should be quite different.