Virtual Whistler

IBM announced enhancements to their social networking tools for business. Lotus Connections 2.0 and IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections feature a mix of new capabilities that blend IBM's expertise in business software with the Web 2.0 capabilities popular in consumer social networking Web sites.

The new home page streams feeds from various components of Lotus Connections and shows people what is happening within their network. Widgets let people customize the main page and add links to external communities such as Facebook or custom business applications used within the organization.

IBM is expanding the tagging abilities of Lotus Connections to include people tagging. With the latest version, people can tag themselves or others based on a key topic or area of expertise. This allows individuals to instantly identify and retrieve live intellect on any given topic and tap into the collective wisdom of a larger group or pinpoint rare, niche expertise from the general population.

Tag clouds are displayed on a person's profile and throughout communities, making it easy to associate people with areas of expertise. Additional new features in Lotus Connections include the ability to send or receive notifications to others about interesting social bookmarks, discussion forums and integration with wiki providers Atlassian and Social Text.

http://www.ibm.com/lotus/connections