Global public relations firm Edelman is another enterprise benefitting from the integration of social networking tools in SharePoint.

One of the world's largest PR firms with 3,200 employees in 51 offices worldwide, Edelman launched SharePoint 2007 and Newsgator SocialSites simultaneously a year and half ago.

"We were already using Newsgator's enterprise server, so we decided to continue that investment with their social networking plug-in," says David Rosenberg, VP and development lead for Internet Services / Corporate MIS at Edelman.

These days, Edelman has 3,500 employees tapping into SocialSites within SharePoint. The PR giant also uses SharePoint for document management as well as for its full corporate intranet (called Fusion) where clients can upload and share files. The firm's extranet platform, where clients can communicate in a secured environment, also runs in SharePoint.

Rosenberg says the big gain with Newsgator integration into SharePoint is that it has enlivened the MySites profile pages with more social features and allowed Edelman to create groups and community pages that interconnect through microblogging, tagging and social bookmarking.