A couple of companies I have worked for have tried company social networking e.g. with Yammer or Tibbr. It doesn't work because companies are fundamentally not social. Like, am I suppose to follow my manager, and his manager, and her manager? Do I have to "like" what they say even if I know it's complete nonsense? Will it be noticed if I'm the only one that doesn't? Can I ever post an honest status, or comment on anything? Is my "friends" list being used to judge me? Does my "engagement" with this project, which was mandated by the CEO, affect my annual appraisal, because you can bet it's tracked.
And it doesn't help that the software itself is universally bad, if it were ever exposed to the public internet where people had a choice to use it or not, it would sink without trace...
I suspect OP was making fun of the open office fad where interrupting my debugging flow by hearing the finance clerks arguing about workload when posting accounts receivable forms or whatever will magically make my code 100x better. Or if I stand up and read from the book of Knuth on the topic of the evils of the bubblesort, that will motivate the salespeople to sell sell sell. Or at those open offices that are as quiet as libraries used to be, the off the charts sarcasm level displays that nobody works together with anyone at all, which is kinda sad and sterile working environment.
At a large company I worked at they tried discussion software but once the shine was gone, out of 150K people you'd have like 10 people who actually posted and on this web discussion board thingy and the content was all filler. Sometimes funny filler, but filler none the less. Imagine the sadness of a HN with only 10 participants.
" It doesn't work because companies are fundamentally not social."
I really have to disagree with this. Social media can be essential in a company that is widely geographically distributed and needs to collaborate, such as a technical sales field with different offices and R&D groups. Really depends on incentives.
And it doesn't help that the software itself is universally bad, if it were ever exposed to the public internet where people had a choice to use it or not, it would sink without trace...