Microsoft is testing an internal social network tool called TownSquare, we learn from ComputerWorld. The tools was developed by the Office Labs division with more details expected at a Boston conference today, but general manager Chris Pratley said that since 100 employees were told about the service in January, 8,000 have gone on to use it. Seven hundred of those now use it every day, he said.
Photo by The_Jester on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
TownSquare looks a lot like Facebook with employee's real names and photo, but principally gives employees feeds and updates about staff roles, their schedule, anniversaries and changes in shared documents. It allows them to decide who receives updates about them, so one employee used the system to find a sponsor for a conference she needed to attend.
Interestingly, the tool is also being trialled by a few unnamed Microsoft customers, and as the project was initiated partly by the Office team (along with SharePoint, Microsft's Office server programme) it is not conceivable that some form of this manifest in a Microsoft enterprise product at some point in the future. Pratley did empahise that TownSquare has been set up as an experimental platform rather than a product, so if anything does pop out of the other end of the Microsoft machine, it is likely to look very different.
Despite the considerable Facebook habits of its staff, the Guardian has introduced an internal network of sorts. I'd hesitate to call it a social network, because it's really just list of your contacts with a photo and a large free text box, and it all lives on our intranet. The BBC is mulling something along the same lines, I hear, but I wonder if it's really worth duplicating existing networks in-house?
Inspired by Adrian Holovaty, I think much of the value (from an internal network point of view) is in maximum search-ability and relevance, so every field could be searchable and users would be updated on new job titles and internal social events, and so on. I wonder if any news organisations have really even begun to explore collaborative networking and work planning tools that are integrated enough with the news process, email, calendars and the rest that they are a benefit, rather than something stuck on the side that just takes more time to use.
On a slightly different tack, I spoke to Second Life founder Philip Rosedale recently and he mentioned the internal communication tool they have called the Love Machine. It's not a networking tool but a messaging system that lets the 250 Linden Lab staff give other staff points for doing good deeds; like Nectar points, but without the Orwellian implications. And after a while, they can cash in their Love points for real money.
