The role of Search in Social Networking

I see Enterprise Search as an enabler of Social Networking (Computing) within the organisation.

The linkage between search and social networking isn't an immediate obvious one, but think about the last time you came across that 'neat presentation' that reinforced your thoughts on a subject, or that blog entry that 'clicked' with you, or the discussion group on a subject you are passionate about ..... chances are you 'searched' to find the entry point into that new source of knowledge (or network).

We are already creating shared content within the organisation - teams with their own intranets, news feeds, wikis and knowledge bases, but if these 'pockets' of shared knowledge are not searchable across the enterprise they can never be effectively shared across the enterprise ..... what i can't find, i can't link to, comment on, blog on, or share further within my networks.

I thought it was interesting how the seradigm article noted that user expectations are increasingly set outside the organisation....."Users' expectations are now set by Google for search, Twitter for microblogging, and Facebook for social networking. Users in corporates have to wait (often a long time) for their organisations to implement the technologies they can use for free on the Web."