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At this weeks IT Forum in Barcelona, Microsoft Corp. is expected to take the wraps off a new Web site aimed at making social-networking technologies more useful to IT professionals.
The objective of the new Microsoft site, known as “The Working Network,” is to encourage Microsoft IT pros to “review the site (some of our tools, third-party services, our content) and use what works for you to become better informed, better connected, and have more free time—no kidding.”
In an introductory post on The Working Network site, staffers explained the genesis for the project: “At a recent Microsoft professional event we observed that fewer than five percent of the attendees read blogs regularly. So all those new RSS feeds available on Microsoft.com arent getting used as much as they might. Thats a shame and thats the smallest part of the lost opportunity.”
A Microsoft Webcast description defined The Working Network as a vehicle for introducing “information technology [IT] professionals to third party Internet services.”
The Working Network also is designed to “bring users together to combine their experience and knowledge,” the Webcast description continued. “Together, they enable a simple, no-hassle means to contribute to and derive value from the resulting affinities. The result is a community of IT professionals that is better connected, better informed, and more productive: in short, a technology intelligence network.”
The staff of The Working Network has been blogging on the site since late October. They are promising to add “new social bookmarking services, some things from Pubsub, updates on the Community Bar, more and more feeds, all delivered in every format we can find and support,” according to a posting on the sites purpose.