Employee networking: The next generation

British American Tobacco hopes to foster dialogue with Facebook-style updates

Two years have passed since the arrival of Facebook’s “News Feed,” an application that effectively turned part of the popular social networking site into a mini-wire service, covering the day-to-day activities of different networks of friends. Whenever a change was made to a Facebook profile—a new photo, a change in dating status—a notation was made and included as part of an ever-running log available to everyone in a particular social network.

Now, thanks to the microblogging service Twitter and other similarly conceived technologies, it’s possible to live in a state of perpetual, virtual contact.

But what, if anything, does the concept hold in store for the business world?