Productivity loss, information leakage, and defamation of fellow employees are all enough to get us fired from our jobs, unless, of course, it is done under the guise of a social network for the enterprise 2.0.
Twitter and to a lesser extent Facebook are like ghetto art communities on the verge of gentrification: Hipsters are loving the first-there, build-something-from-scratch feeling, and hungry capitalists are eyeing the goods and trying to figure out how to get in on the action and make a profit. But few companies have figured out how to capitalize on all that coveted word-of-mouth and networking.
For more than a year, an @TheWhiteHouse account on Twitter's microblogging site was used to dutifully send out more than 1,500 alerts about speeches, press briefings and other Bush administration news. The Twitter account's claim that it was officially sanctioned by the White House appeared believable, if only because it was so earnest — and boring.
President Barack Obama's stated plan to create a "Google for government" began Tuesday with a WhiteHouse.gov makeover that was announced via a blog entry on the redesigned Web site and a Twitter post.