wissel.net :: Social Software in Action

On the 15th August 2007 there was a panel discussion @ the Grand Hyatt in Singapore: "Define the Future of Business Collaboration in Singapore". General public social software sites are all the rage: Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, Xing and whatever might be out there. Still businesses are confused or cautious what all the shiny new tools will do for them. To make the panel information available to a wider audience and to test how business minded Social Software would work IBM Singapore and SPH teamed up and launched Blog4Biz. It features 3 blogs "General Discussion", "Intra Organization Ideas" and "Inter Organization Ideas" as well as a WIKI. The wiki is read only for normal users, while everybody can contribute an entry in the "blog".
Being a Singapore website you can win prices for contributing a blog entry. I think it is a good example how you can get started in exploring social software. Go have a look.

However there are a number of thoughts that I'm not sure to be addressed well on the site. First there is that landing page, a concept that has been considered outdated for at least 6-7 years. Furthermore the "blogs" lack what makes them typical: one or a few contributors who make this their permanent home. It looks to me more like a blog template used to facilitate a discussion group. Also the 3 fixed categories miss the point. On a blog I would expect one stream of entries and the ability to pick/select a category if I'm only interested in one type of topic. There seems to be some confusion on "intra" and "inter" This entry explains in great length why WIKI is unsuitable for Intra Organization collaboration highlighting security as a stumbling block. As long as I'm inside (intra) my organization it shouldn't be an issue. Did he mean between companies (inter)? Also I can't click on a contributor's name to see his/her profile and/or all her contributions on the site. Quite some way to go.