The concept of bookmarking web pages has been with us since the first web browsers. However, the bookmarking functions within today’s browsers are still quite primitive, restricting the user to a private set of bookmarks associated with one browser or PC. Some desktop software has been developed to extend this functionality (e.g. more flexibility, synchronisation and customisation) but with limited distribution.

In the mean time, tagging – the unstructured classification of online information – and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) are establishing themselves as the cornerstones of what is being referred to as the Web 2.0 revolution. Combining these two concepts into a web service that allows people to tag and share interesting web pages with others has resulted in social bookmarking, probably the best known example of which is del.icio.us.

In the corporate setting however, there has so far been little or no use of social bookmarking tools as part of knowledge management or collective intelligence strategies.

In part, this is because the vast majority of existing social bookmarking services are aimed at individuals, and – as yet – there is no clear choice of software for a company wishing to use social bookmarking tools inside their organisation (for enterprise bookmarking). The only options appear to be:

1. Have employees use a publicly available service
2. Build something in-house from scratch
3. Adapt an open source social bookmarking application

The first option does not give companies any kind of control over user administration, tagging schemas, or authentication methods. Building something in-house or adapting open source code would provide the best option for large companies (for example, both Lucent and IBM have done this), but it is time-consuming, costly, and requires specialist skills.

Yet there are clear benefits to companies from using social bookmarking software across the organisation, for example:

• Research functions could share information about clients, prospects and industry trends
• Product development teams could collect and share product ideas and features
• Sales and marketing staff could gather consumer and competitive intelligence
• Public relations teams could share news coverage
• Management could quickly and easily see the collective intelligence of their organisation, and the connections between employees

These are just a few examples of the way in which geographically and functionally dispersed organisations can harness the collective intelligence of all their employees using social bookmarking. And because this knowledge sharing is done in an unstructured way and with a clear benefit to each individual, it is less likely to be met with resistance and can grow organically.