One of the reasons that we chose to promote the use of our social computing tools at the BBC by word of mouth and individual advocacy rather than by having a corporate campaign was that I knew that if people were going to feel comfortable enough to start expressing themselves and sharing what they knew they were going to have to trust each other and the environment in which they were operating.

One of the ideas that is emerging here at FASTforward ‘07 is of search as a platform. Search as the glue that holds “small pieces loosely joined” together and potentially replaces the more structured approach of enterprise software to date.

During his opening keynote last night Ray Lane characterised the enterprise software industry thus far as having delivered overpriced and over-complex tools that have under-delivered and created an atmosphere of mistrust.

If search tools, and the companies that deliver them, are truly going to work as a source of organisational cohesion then they are going to have to be trusted.

I am going to have to trust that they are finding and delivering the stuff that I need to do my job better than my home grown network of blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. I am going to have to trust that they will index and discover only my stuff that I am happy for them to do so and that they will reflect changing contexts over time. I am going to have to trust that those deploying the technology and those delivering it are more trustworthy than those who have made me wary of corporate computing thus far over the years.

These are non-trivial challenges for the search industry.

[Tags: ff07]