State to start social network for employees only

The State Department's e-diplomacy office is preparing to roll out a new internal social networking site called Corridor, intended for departmental employees, according to several online reports.

The department’s Information Resource Management Bureau’s Office of eDiplomacy is in charge of the Corridor network, which is “quietly moving out of beta and into open enrollment,” according to a blog post dated April 19 by Gadi Ben-Yehuda, social media director for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

Corridor has been built on a open-source WordPress platform, which is operating behind a secure firewall, Ben-Yehuda wrote. Like Facebook and LinkedIn, it will allow users to create profiles and share information. Employees voted on the name, Corridor, because it calls to mind the informal discussions held in the office corridors.

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As of March 10, the project was in an “early beta stage with about 250 customers,” Moore wrote in a blog entry at the Government In the Lab website.

“Corridor will ensure that skills, work history, your Corridor Reputation, are available at a glance, helping this very large organization [become] more efficient,” Moore wrote.

A State Department official declined to comment April 22, saying he needed to get clearance to do an interview on the project. Information was not immediately available from other departmental officials.

A year ago, Boly confirmed that the department was working on an internal social network project, then named Statebook.