Enterprise social computing technologies are beginning to spill over into the corporate environment with increasing frequency. These useful tools are fun and a great way to keep up with your friends and family, but they can also be used to keep up with your business colleagues and team members. Technologies such as activity streams, microblogging, shared collaboration tools, and rich clients can help keep your team members connected and up to date with the real-time information that they need to be able to perform their job.

Activity streams can give team members a way to subscribe to information provided by other team members or other groups that are critical to their performance. An example would be if an outside group published specifications crucial to the project you are currently working on. If you subscribe to their group then you will know when they make the status update with the link attached that points to their technical specifications that you can then go out and access. Tapping into an enterprise social computing network offers many advantages and you will quickly see the benefits.

Microblogging originally started out as a social tool with such such as Twitter and Facebook, until recently. Microblogging gives team members a way to post critical information and for a group of subscribers to be able to quickly disseminate that information after they're notified of the new post. Links, audio, and video can also be published in microblogs in order to make the experience richer and more interactive. Users who find the information in these posts useful can then "tag" or "like" the post, which then allows all of their linked "friends" to see the post and have access to the content as well. This is almost a viral way of floating information to your enterprise social computing community.

Rich client software is also another social tool that most people already have on their smart phones or netbooks. If part of your team must be on the road, they can stay connected from anywhere using apps or widgets written for smart phones and computers. They can be just as efficient and productive as office employees, because they have access to the same real-time enterprise social computing technologies. They are able to keep their colleagues back in the office on their results, locations, and successes. By providing traveling team members with rich tools that they can leverage on the go you are able to provide a cohesive information network that helps your organization run like a well oiled machine.

The enterprise social computing technology can usually be incorporated into your existing systems enabling them to enhance the resources you already have in place. They make email more useful and provide information in other ways that are simply not possible with other forms of communication. Activity streams provide a news service that interested parties can subscribe to. Microblogging can be an excellent tool for collaborating within a group. Rich client software provides team members with multiple means of communication while they are in the office and on the road. What started out as a social phenomenon has now spilled over into the corporate world and will eventually change the way we communicate forever.