We’ve evolved from paintings on cave walls to rhetoric on social media sites, and now businesses are taking advantage of enterprise social media in the workplace as well.

Technology writer Clay Shirky talks about how our generation is living through “the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.” Social media combines all previous mediums of communication—from Paleolithic cave paintings to movies and print. But before, these previous mediums only allowed for one person to talk to a group or one-on-one conversations; now social media provides support for group conversations. Audiences can talk back, and interact with each other. They present ideas and information, dialogue and socratically question.

We’ve already seen how public social media unites audiences, heightens political campaigns and accelerates human rights activism. Now we’re starting to see businesses take advantage of this medium internally as well.

Take Pharmex, an international outsourcing partner for the sale of healthcare products. With 3,800 employees in 19 countries, Pharmexx needed a way to connect employees across boundaries to improve knowledge sharing and better assist their clients. Pharmexx started using tibbr, enterprise social networking integrated with SharePoint, to allow conversations in context of key business updates and enhance interdepartmental effectiveness and knowledge sharing.  “tibbr provides a way to connect employees, transfer information across groups, and improve cross-pollination of ideas to better position our services,” said Karsten Sternberg, Global Head Commercial Operations of Pharmexx.

Enterprise social networking allows employees to communicate in a mature forum with the intent of finding better business outcomes. And unlike public social media sites, businesses are taking their private social networks a step further, integrating business applications in the context of conversations, so employees can collaborate to get work done more productively.

We’re only beginning to see how social media is transforming communication in business. To learn more about enterprise social networking, visit http://www.tibbr.com.