Here’s a great bit from Technology Research News passed on to me from a knowledge broker extraordinaire at one of my client sites: Messenger taps social nets describes research at the University of Michigan in the development of a tool that constructs expertise profiles for people on instant messaging buddy lists. If you and all your buddies have expertise profiles (and the tool helps build them for you based on what you’ve got on your own web site and in your browser favorites), then you can send a request to “SWIM” (Small World Instant Messaging) and if you’re not the expert, SWIM will see if one of your buddies matches the query and forward it on.

If you get a match from a “friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend” who happens to be online and available — Connection!