Chris Pratley, general manager of Office Labs,
is slated to disclose details of the prototype -- called TownSquare --
Thursday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. He spoke to
Computerworld about the project, which was launched in January and has
already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.
With
a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook.com's (in which
Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled
by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for
public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about
an employee.
TownSquare also notifies users when a document or file is modified. Users can customize their feeds and monitor who is receiving
information about them.
In
early January, Pratley's group told 100 Microsoft employees about the
network. Since then, 8,000 employees who learned of TownSquare by word
of mouth have visited the network at least once, Pratley noted. About
700 use it daily..."
