Microsoft and Social Networking (Aggreg8)

Have just picked this up from Mike Gotta’s Collaborative Thinking blog. Microsoft’s plunge into the social networking and collaboration space doesn’t look too bad.  Aggreg8 is for the use of the IT community, but it’s not so much the type of community that interests me as the overall functionality of the collaborative workspace. Very similar in many respects to the community workspace recently released by the IDeA, which I was was responsible for – e.g. you can keep track of your trusted network, find others through your network with similar interests, create sub-communities etc. Plus a range of collaboration tools, allowing members to create postings, post files, share events etc. The IDeA version has some additional features – such as a wiki and a self-contained blog, but lacks the autonomy at member-level to create their own groups. I’m not sure whether the public sector (most likely non-IT) is ready for this degree of flexibility… yet.

The IDeA community workspace is only in it’s first release and further functional enhancements are planned. I’ve now handed over responsibility for the site to my colleagues at IDeA, who I will encourage to monitor and learn from what is happening at Aggreg8.

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