Social Networking ... Behind the Firewall

I came across a very interesting blog post about Why Social Networks Don't Work for Business where Paul Pedrazzi talks about the two major reason for social networks not working for business ... Trust. And, that, once you have trusted sources, then you need content.

While I agree with Paul, I would like to add another aspect to this, and that is relevance. I would say it is relevance and trust which together bring value to a social network. While there are a lot of people who are digg ing, it is also a fact that information overload is something which is a very important phenomenon. For example, I have been thinking of reading all those nice things people read, one of these days, but never coming round to them, because theres just so many of them.

Which is why the idea of the internal social network is very appeling. In fact, this is something I have written about earlier, here, here, and here. The primary question I am asking is, why is it that organizations are not catching up on the ideas of social networking within the context of the organization, especially when the benefits seem to be so straightforward.