The activity is called worknetting and was described in 2007 as a new trend for 2008 in the bulletin for marketeers[1] and was further discussed and developed at the Web 2.0 Expo 2008[2] in San Francisco.
Where social networking focuses on building online relations for participants, based on personal or organizational profiles and allowing them to communicate together, a worknet enables a network of people and organizations to collaborate and do business based on a common interest, such as in project collaboration, co-creating of products or policy, organizing events, administration, sharing experiences etc.
Heather M. Caruso et al. describes in "Boundaries Need Not Be Barriers: Leading Collaboration among Groups in Decentralized Organizations" that "no matter how a multi-divisional organization is designed, it needs to find effective ways to spontaneously and responsively coordinate information and activity across its resulting units".
[6] The provision of the online worknet as a platform facilitating a collaborative group is evolving with new web technologies providing new ways to enable teams, communities and networks worldwide.
Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies.
To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.