Microsoft Knowledge Network – a different approach to social networking

Microsoft’s Knowledge network looks interesting, it uses a client side component to gather information from your PC including email authors and recipients, Outlook contacts, IM contacts, manager (as defined in Active Directory), managers direct reports and your direct reports and SharePoint 2007 colleagues and it also analyses email subject and body text for keywords that reflect your areas of expertise. 

Once assembled you get the chance to decide whether the resulting Keywords, Colleagues, or External Contacts are visible to – Only Me, My Manager, My Workgroup, My Colleagues, and Everyone.  The information is then published into your SharePoint 2007 “My Site”.  Integrating this information into the My Site is a great idea, because it already contains a lot of rich information about you, including – if you choose to keep one – a personal blog as well as AD info about your title, department, manager, group memberships, interests, skills, your picture and your colleagues.

Knowledge Network uses this information to extend the people search capability of SharePoint 2007.  You can find out more information about Knowledge Network from the excellent blog and web site.

If you want a good overview of social networking in general then I recommend this overview from Dave Pollard.