The buzz phrase is "leveraging your social capital." And a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, "Six Degrees of Exploitation," (Aug 4, 2003) describes how new software helps employers "mine their employees' acquaintances for new business prospects." The article mentions three companies: Visible Path, "Relationship capital is a company's most valuable and least visible asset"; Spoke Software, "What if you could instantly build a network of the millions of people your company knows?"; and ZeroDegrees, "Close a deal... Meet new people through people you know."

According to the Journal, "These programs scan workers' contacts from their computerized address books, instant-message buddy lists, electronic calendars and e-mail correspondence. They then make maps of all the relationships they find among the employees and all their contacts." (You're actually prevented from making direct connections by layers of confidentiality and autonomy.)

Obviously, this seems pretty invasive for the real estate industry where the nuances of personal relationships cannot be easily translated into a database! But shouldn't there be some convenient way for sharing personal contact information within a brokerage company? What do you do?

--Peter Pike