Last week a post on the Linked In Intranet Professionals group got my attention:
To which I answered:
As it is, there's already quite enough scope on intranets for out of date content and broken links. People rarely manage their content and pages as it is. Without manual governance of those networked files and associated links (which is impossible, really, thus requires a system to maintain it) then there's much potential for those links to become more hassle than they're worth and for the trust and value of the intranet to plummet because of that.
Another point is that people may have different viewing permissions for different files. Nothing more frustrating than clicking on a link and then being told you can't actually view it.
If a group or BU can demonstrate how they would effectively manage and maintain their links, then their might be an opportunity for progress.
James also replied, as did Dorje McKinnon. See the full thread here.
What are your thoughts on the topic?
Join the group
If you're not a member of this group then I'd recommend joining it. It's growing at 40 or so members a week and there are flurries of activity with some really useful intranet-related discussions.
Thoughts on Linked In
As an aside, it's also interesting to watch Linked In's development. In its early days it was just a networking tool, with a further primary of gaining visibility for your skills and resume.
Now with the addition of groups, RSS feeds, blog feeds, recommendations, link sharing and so on, it's becoming a fully-fledged networking and content platform that's actually pretty nice to use. I spend a lot more time on Linked In than I do on Facebook. That may seem a pointless comparison, but I wonder if it came down to it and I was forced to choose one or the other, it might well be Facebook that got the chop.
