Quiz.

1. If you want to sell something online, what site do you go to?
2. If you want to connect to long-lost friends online, where do you look first?
3. If you want to micro-blog with potentially the world, where do you go?
4. How many phone systems do you use at work?
5. How many email applications do you use within your company?
6. How many instant messaging apps are used where you work?
7. If you want to ask a question of everyone in your company or geography or division, where do you go?
8. If you need to warn your colleagues and their colleagues about a lesson learned, where do you post it?
9. If you have a superiffic presentation and you want to share it with anyone who might need it, where do you upload it?

Answers:

1. eBay
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. One
5. One. Unless you’ve recently merged with a company that uses the other one.
6. One. Unless you’re company doesn’t believe in IM, and you’re all using AIM and MSN Messenger behind their backs.
7. Either that wiki site, or maybe it’s the blog thingy. Oh wait, put it in that one forum. No, the other one.
8. That one private teamsite. Wait. No, uh, the blog thing again. Nope, hold on. Which colleagues are you talking about again?
9. Easy. The SharePoint site. But, the one that IT has given everyone access to. What the deuce? Only my division has access? Crap.

Wait.

I have more questions.

1. Where do you go to look up someone’s current and past work so that you can figure out if they’re smart or a doofus? Their profile is probably sadly out of date, so I’m guessing you have to flush out their competency from who knows how many repositories. It’s like hunting pheasant. Or snipe.
2. Where do you go to find best practices and lessons learned from your as-yet unknown colleagues from across the pond? Oh, you have to know them first, probably.
3. Where do you go to accidentally discover that superiffic presentation just in time for your big client meeting? Not gonna happen.

Yep.

There’s a reason a single site for this kind of stuff works.