Connecting Organizational Silos: Taking Knowledge Flow Management to the Next Level with Social Media

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As mentioned earlier, technology has given us great improvements in search. Those advancements are not always obvious, as the amount of information has exploded at the same time. So even with improved search algorithms, search tools still have major challenges to return what people are looking for. As a colleague once complained to me, “Who actually needs a search engine? What I need is a find engine’” The first response to this funny comment might be to point out that you need to search in order to find something. But there are a number of ways to find that do not include search, actually.

One way is to be pointed to content by technology or other users. In the simplest case, this might be a personal recommendation. One common feature of social media tools these days is recommendation. Based on my profile information, my type of activity, my comments, and my type of connections, a recommendation engine can suggest content and connections that might be of potential value to me, personally. The quality of those engines varies but, overall, they are getting better. Automated recommendation started with retail sites. Amazon’s list of recommended books based on browsing and buying behavior was just the beginning of what has become a standard feature for many retail sites these days. Even Autotrader.com, a retail automotive company began making recommendations over a decade ago, using browsing behavior as a basis to suggest other kinds of cars shoppers might ...