Can Social Networking Tools Help Streamline Inboxes?

A recent article on Forbes.com by Kraig Swensrud, an executive at Salesforce.com, on using social networking tools to cure email overload piqued my interest.  Most employees these days, me included, receive an overwhelming amount of business-related e-mail at all hours of the day.  That email comes in a variety of forms – some specifically for the recipient, others for a larger number of recipients or for the entire company.  Some are administrative in nature, others seek answers to specific questions or provide specific information.  Some are important, others are functionally equivalent to spam.  

Swensrud’s article notes that the once revolutionary nature of email has worn off and has been replaced by Facebook.  He then discusses ways that entities can use Facebook-like solutions to solve productivity challenges.  Many of his suggestions relate to knowledge management – he suggests that employees create profiles on an internal company website showing their knowledge and experience.  He also suggests having a continuously updated listing of all projects an employee is working on and their status.  This can show how busy an employee is and allow others to see the status of a project rather than sending an email asking for an update.

These are all good and interesting ideas.  What goes unmentioned, however, is that any internal network or knowledge management system is only as good and as useful as the users allow it to be.  If employees don’t update the status of their projects, the system won’t work.  Similarly, if employees don’t understand the system or understand how it helps them, they won’t use it.  All of which means that the internal network may lessen the email barrage, but some employees likely will persist in sending company-wide emails anyway.