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With the talk of "social" seeping into every nook and cranny of business software - social CRM, social collaboration, social business - intranet software could not have kept immune for long. Enter social intranets! Dion Hinchcliffe, that heavyweight of modern software has dealt with it in detail, but I would try to do a lay businessman perspective. For one, it is to an extent a marketing term that has been just thrown out there without much thought. That being said, the concept itself has some depth, and also reflects the changing nature of IT and organizational structure. Social intranets mean introducing the concepts of social networking and consumer software into the intranet, not just as extra features, but deeply embedding them into the basic design of intranets. Traditionally, intranets have consisted of an intranet homepage (or dashboard), with subpages for specific groups and individuals. Each of these pages displays static information (with some dynamic elements like a news feed), and has collaboration tools bundled around it - document libraries, calendars, forums etc. However, social intranets somewhat change this "glue" or intranet pages which have held together group information and tools. It introduces the "activity stream" concept of social networks, where the group page displays all the activity relating to the group displayed on it as a continuous stream of information. Similarly, the personal page of each worker displays a continuous stream of information related to that worker across groups. This gives groups and individuals a real time view of whatever is happening across the organization that they may have interest in. A second aspect of social intranets is the importance of personal profiles. Traditionally, intranet just had an employee directory with basic information on that employee. However, directory pages have given way to personal profiles which display the information on that person, a stream of activity related to that person, and also allow others to connect to that person, and message them directly from that page. This helps people in organizations, especially large organizations discover expertise across the organization, which might not have otherwise been easy to find. Â
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