Social networking sites to Knowledge networking sites

Social networking sites have gained popularity among people by integrating it in their daily life to develop their networks beyond geographical boundaries. Though major part of the activities in these sites is to develop contacts and continue a long term friendship, only a few utilise it for sharing knowledge. There is a need for sites that are specifically reserved for certain activities and dating sites, music, photo and video sharing sites are some of the examples.

The social networking sites are undergoing a paradigm change from "its not who you know" to "its what you know". People like to connect to a knowledgable person to spend their time usefully by exchanging their knowledge looking for a mutual learning environment. Now a person in the networking sites is weighed on the intensive knowledge he/she carries. They gets an image makeover turning out to be a knowledgable person with enormous contacts. (Example bloggers like kirubashankar -
www.kiruba.com and Ajay Jain - www.techgazing.com are perceived as knowledgable people in the IT technology part). Though many networking sites are integrating new features for disseminating knowledge, the users still perceive it as a platform for making friends. So, new websites are being launched for exchanging knowledge for niche audiences like IT professionals - techtribes.com, businessmen - siliconindia.com, ryze.com, linkedIn.com.

Sites like authorstream and slideshare enhance sharing of powerpoint presentation among net users. The presentations uploaded can be an academic topic, a marketing campaign a business pitch or handling investment plans. Microsoft estimated that about 30 million PowerPoint presentations are created everyday. Figures also show that the number of PowerPoint presentation users are about 500 million. Though internet is the best mode to send these presentations to meet instant communication needs across geographies, the heavy size of PowerPoint, speed of internet and the sense of losing control over the presentation are major hindrances to meet the objective.