Should a company embrace social tools into their enterprise software similar to Microsofts Outlook social-network link?
I believe yes. I haven’t tried out Microsoft Outlook’s new social-network abilities but I have used Xobni (a plugin for Outlook) which does similar things. The idea behind the ‘social network’ capabilities is to see who you e-mail the most, how you communicate and how you are all connected. As you may have realized, this can be useful when setting up meetings for instance and it automatically suggests people that you communicate with frequently as participants of the meeting (for instance, your supervisor or manager). Right now, few, if any, enterprise software tap into those social networks. Many have started to use Yammer (twitter for professional organizations). You may want to look there for more ideas on social tools in professional settings.
