Social bookmarking for the enterprise

Tagging and social bookmarking – two phrases much in vogue today as the means with which individuals can track information online and connect it with their own and other people’s interests.

A new venture called Cogenz looks as though it might address a need for social bookmarking within organizations, providing employees with the means to tag and connect with co-workers:

Cogenz aims to fill that need. It won’t be suitable for every single organisation, I’m sure, but our ambition is to do for enterprise bookmarking what Socialtext has done for enterprise wikis.

The man behind Cogenz is Niall Cook, the head of the online communication practice at PR group Hill & Knowlton in the UK.

In a post on the Cogenz blog on Saturday, Niall outlines how he thinks the service could appeal to organizations:

[…] 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

Cogenz has not yet launched but will be in private beta soon. I’m observing developments with keen interest.