Social Networking Displacing "Knowledge Management?"

Sometimes it isn't easy to understand how dramatically-new technology can be applied in a business setting. Consider "social" software and networking.

As it turns out, enabling workers to set up profiles, form groups and "follow" each other's status updates can provide direct business value. It isn't just the social connections. The new software increases productivity by making it easier for employees to identify who does what within an organization and to share their knowledge.

Some of you might instinctively recognize that these are the sorts of problems "knowledge management" was supposed to address, a couple of decades ago. 

Social networking might be providing some of that value in a new way.

That doesn't necessarily or primarily mean using Facebook, though. Tibco Software launched a service called tibbr that not only enables users to follow what colleagues are doing, it also allows them to follow data, such as the status of an order or invoice.