A new Ryze friend, Flemming Madsen, just posted a reference to an article in Dave Pollard’s blog on Social Networks, Social Software, and the Future of Knowledge Management (with a followup on business weblogs). Good thinking, and a great illustration of what you truly want as results from a search engine… the linkages among people, content, and organizations.

The article provides some good context on knowledge management (though a bit cynical), with interesting comments about what more is needed in social software to make network enablement the “new knowledge management” (my term). Pollard also asks good questions about the role of network enablement software, including the “metrics and monetization” bugaboo. For individuals inside corporations, the question is how time spent networking can be measured and valued. For individuals outside of corporations — independents — the question is how time spent in networks helps to pay the phone bill.

Not a lot happening from LinkedIn, though I did invite quite a few people to see what would shake out. I also looked (quickly) at Friendster, which seems to be built on a similar concept, but that is designed to help people get dates or find friends, whereas LinkedIn focuses on business relationships.