Google, not surprisingly, is one of the best-known exponents. Every Google employee can create a blog and contribute to internal wikis. Social technologies play an essential role in keeping the creative juices flowing and also help Google keep track of its rapidly growing numbers of ideas, projects and employees.

The laid-back atmosphere of the Googleplex might seem light years away from the dark-suited City of London. But Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), the investment bank, is also a believer in the brave new world of wikis and blogs.

"We recognised early on that these tools would allow us to collaborate more effectively than existing technologies," says JP Rangaswami, chief information officer at DKW.

More than 450 DKW employees have internal blogs and the bank has built an internal wiki with more than 2,000 pages which is used by a quarter of its workforce. After just six months, the traffic on the wiki exceeds that on the entire DKW intranet. Rangaswami says one of the most popular uses for the wiki is to create meeting agendas, a task fraught with political pitfalls. "Using wikis is much more participative and non-threatening, as people can see what other people have suggested."