Applying Social Software for Knowledge Management

An increasingly important resource for companies especially in an economic sense is knowledge. Knowledge is bounded to a person therefore a person as knowledge worker plays a key role for a company. From this is follows that the greater the importance of people for a company’s success, the greater the importance of interaction based on social relations within a company. Social networks describe these social relations of individuals. Due to the application of social software in companies existing social networks of persons become a technical equivalent. The workshop aims to discuss social software applications in companies. Applications of social software include social sharing, e.g. Flickr, social collaboration, e.g. Wikipedia, social bookmarking, e.g. del.icio.us, social communication, e.g. Skype, and social networking, e.g. OpenBC. All these examples are positioned in the Internet. Companies like socialtext use the idea of social software to carry on a business. But to prolong the success of social software a affordable and effective application in companies must be visible.

Following questions are discussed in the first part of the workshop:
- Are existing Social Software applications transferable to business applications? If yes, how?
- What are requirements, e.g. for the company’s structure, the people, the culture for applying social software in a company?