Fascinating article on Cisco in Fortune… they speak to the power of Social Networking…

Another tool is social networking, that new-time religion that Cisco has embraced with a convert’s fervor. In September it launched a website that is a microcosm of everything evoked by the phrase “Web 2.0.” There’s a Ciscopedia, where people can build an evolving body of lore about anything fellow Ciscans might want to know. There are text blogs and video blogs, discussion groups, and “problems and solutions links.” There’s an internal version of MySpace, which provides not only title and contact info but also personal profiles, job histories, interests, and videos. Soon it will show whether a person is reachable by, say, office phone, cell, IM, or telepresence, and offer a one-click connection.

And there’s more. “We’re going to use social bookmarking to allow us to take the pulse of the organization,” says Jim Grubb, who built the website (and whose day job is putting together John Chambers’ demos). They’ll do that by aggregating the tags employees create into “tag clouds” when they click on sites. Tracking these will allow a Cisco honcho to get a snapshot of the current hot-button issues for marketing or finance. If an employee is tagged as the go-to person for virtualization, say, he could earn a bonus for this previously unacknowledged expertise. That’s down the road. Asked for a here-and-now example, Cisco marketing head Sue Bostrom laughs (proudly) and recounts the six-month online campaign to develop and select a five-note “Cisco sound” for TV and Internet ads. “Ten thousand employees voted,” she says, “and 1,200 partners also participated.”