Hmm, the US military gets the value of social networking to discover expertise. Extract from Guardian article below:

In simple terms, iLink is a machine learning-based system that models users and content in a social network and then points the user to relevant content.

The team developed the basic social networking technology, which combines workflow and analytics. The research and development effort was part of a five-year project called CALO (Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes), and funded by the US Department of Defense.

“They wanted a real system to be built and deployed into military settings,” said Jeffrey Davitz, an SRI scientist and co-developer of the iLink technology. “What we did was connect the text mining technology that had been done in social media and connected it to the Web 2.0 applications,” he added.

The iLink system had several goals, including real-time learning by matching queries and communities users; adapting to user demands and directions, providing accuracy in message targeting and routing and, finally, dynamic user profile correction based on community behaviours and identification of community experts.

The learning in iLink occurs by watching a natural social network, and selecting effective strategies that emerge from the system as the members try to solve problems. The system continuously monitors the real social network and it is capable of drafting from the social network’s learning.