The purpose of this research is to understand and evaluate the use of open-source social software as a means for improving enterprise efficiency, organizational knowledge and group collaboration. Chawner and Lewis (2006) define social software and any software that “makes it easy for groups of people to communicate or work together in a virtual environment.” Examples of social software would include wikis, weblogs (blogs), online discussion forums, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), instant messaging (IM), group decision support systems (GDSS), email, and video and voice conferencing. Though all of these conversational technologies provide their own significant benefit to organizational efficiency and knowledge, this paper will focus primarily on wikis and weblogs.  

The research is presented in three sections. The first section explains the wiki, how it works, and its features and benefits for organizational use; including its use as a tool for knowledge management. This section also includes wiki shortcomings, practical organizational applications, and suggestions on selecting and successfully implementing a wiki. The second section takes a similar approach in exploring weblogs and the last section compares the two technologies and offers some brief discussion.