Make contact. And do it the way individuals do - the social networking way. Consumers have long used social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to blog, get in on chats, tag websites, and network.

Companies like IBM are following suit. Vice-president of social computing, Mr Jeff Schick said that networking tools have allowed the company to reach not only its staff but also partners and customers, more cohesively.

Big Blue has an internal profile system with more than 475,000 profiles of partners, employees and contractors.

For each person, the database tracks information such as contact numbers, locations, experiences, qualifications, patents, the communities to which each person belongs, and their photographs too

Lotus technology advisor Stephan Wissel, who is based in Singapore, has blogged since 2003 and ?uses it every day for simple things like locating a subject matter expert?.

There are more than 700 communities within IBM - from personal interest groups (like golfing) to commercial alignments (for product lines to technologies like service-oriented architecture).

Mr Schick revealed that more than 27,000 IBM employees maintain blogs and wikis - from professional document libraries related to work matters to social bookmarking sites on quilt-making.

The database receives 6 million lookups every day. The advantages are obvious. For one, it is easy to organise a work team made up of subject matter experts from within the company - even if members are around the globe.

It is also a great way to retain domain expertise: When an employee who is an expert on a specific subject is transferred or leaves, the knowledge he has built up is still available on tap.

Technical sales manager Rahul Vadgama blogs on Lotus issues and feels that social networks help to "flatten the communication channels to decision makers".

For example, forums are available where all IBM employees "can post and share their ideas with senior executives".

By making this information available to partners and customers, IBM is also reinforcing its relationships with them.

Mr Schick's division is responsible for the same tools used in social networking, such as Lotus Connections, Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime.

Connections is made up of five modules - Profiles, Communities, Dogear, Blogs and Activities - and mimics the way people naturally interact: by making contact with others in the same community. As Mr Schick puts it, "to succeed in business, you need good connections".

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