The size of the conference, for those who haven’t been top an ASTD event, can be gleaned from attendance of 250 people at one of 12 concurrent sessions. 

Yet only about 6 in the room admitted that they currently use social networking as a learning delivery technique. In response to a survey, most wanted to use these tools “alongside formal learning.” This implies to the source that social networking is not on the learning plan – it happens independently.

The barriers to implementation in the workplace appear to be:

• Firewalls
• IP (intellectual property)
• Privacy
• Security
• Control of information by management
• Strict control over policies – Accuracy / Liability / Discoverability / Compliance / Change Management – Ready for it / Culture 
•  Management take it seriously – away from work
• Is it real work or not?
• Education of management
• Lack of resources – Mobile devices
• Pushback from workforce – adoption

What about the quality of the content? That is ALMOST a non-issue. Think about it – the information is getting out now, but it is over the phone, IM, email.

END QUOTE 

So chalk up advantage 1 for social networking – transparency.