We humans are social creatures. With rare exception, we strive to relate, converse and connect with others. Social networking promotes online communities of interests and activities that promote connections between users in a more open and robust manner than simple e-mail.

While best represented by the quintessential MySpace and Facebook, social networking has made significant strides into the corporate intranet where employee networking is becoming a valuable asset to leading organizations that covet the new breed of employee. This young, web savvy employee cohort desires – if not demands – a more social and dynamic work environment that uses the best possible Web 2.0 (Intranet 2.0) technology.

Though e-mail still occupies an important stronghold in the nascent world of Intranet 2.0, social and employee networking communications is best embodied by instant messaging, discussion forums, and RSS technology. While these technologies build upon the value of the archetypal killer application that is e-mail, the real value delivered by employee networking is the group communications dynamic where a single employee can communicate both actively and passively with other similar or ‘connected’ employees or the entire employee population as a whole.

Sabre Town: Sabre's employee networking intranet site

Sabre, the company that runs most of the world’s airline flight reservation systems among other systems, is an impressive leader in employee networking. With nearly 10,000 employees spread around the globe (55% work outside of the U.S. where they are headquartered), Sabre is a progressive company that has Intranet 2.0 with spectacular results.

Recognizing their own unique needs as a global, distributed workforce, Sabre embarked to build their own employee networking intranet from scratch. Using another nascent technology, Ruby on Rails, Sabre built an impressive employee networking platform called Sabre Town. Sabre Town represents the company’s need to build more meaningful connections with this geographically diverse employee population.


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Read the complete Sabre employee networking case study article