NASA, Booz Allen Hamilton find treasure in social networking

31.07.2009
It may just be that the Gen Y kids fueling the Web 2.0 and social craze know exactly what they are doing.

The “what” is creating an interconnected Web of relationships that fosters the sharing of ideas, uncovers expertise, and brings data out of hiding to solve problems or fuel projects.

Corporate users are taking notice, and Booz Allen Hamilton among them, because those are just the results companies coveted but couldn’t get a decade ago when knowledge was a buzz word and a project failure inside many organizations.

“Explore these [social networking] technologies because the Gen Y kids are probably right,” says Chris Howard, vice president and research directory for the Burton Group. If history is any indication, social networking could become the next instant messaging, which grew from a teen-girl chat service into a core element of corporate unified communication systems.“You have to focus on the business value and de-emphasize the cool factor,” Howard said Thursday at the annual Burton Group Catalyst Conference.

That is what is doing both externally – with Web-facing portals, virtual worlds, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – and internally with blogs, wikis, workspaces, and social networks interconnected with content, document and records management systems.