A New Twist on the Social Enterprise

We've been hearing a lot about the social enterprise lately and for good reason. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that people are the ones using business software and that people are generally social by nature. We want to connect with each other, share information and build networks of expertise within our organizations. This is a big part of Enterprise 2.0 and welcomed new perspective on business software.But perhaps the word "social" can be taken one step further to describe connecting with people in a purely fun way to build relationships or take the edge of a stressful workday. That's the subject of this article at washingtonpost.com - how companies are learning to build fun into their software to help develop relationships and create camaraderie in the workplace. The article raises the question of exactly how much of our physical social interaction can be replaced by virtual interactions but that's the case with social software in general. How far can a wiki or community site go in replacing the real experience of physically connecting with people?