Maybe Status.net could be a BI application

This post has gotten a lot of attention. There are a couple of interesting points in it.

I think the idea at social networks could deliver new kinds of information to BI systems is a good one.

I also agree that social networks could deliver BI content. In fact BI is often very collaborative.

But that won't be the future of BI.

For one thing, there is a lot of information out there that nobody really has in his head. BI tools are there to discover that information. Until that happens, nobody in your network is going to be able to tell you about it.

BI content is often created by power users who swap content back and forth or create reports and publish them to relatively passive recipients. It is a very social activity, and in some ways it fits social networks. On the other hand, social networks have some of the well known failings that knowlege workers struggle with now, especially versioning, data quality and other reliability issues. Until a social network finds a solution to those problems, it won't revolutionize BI distribution.