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When Honeywell began to try out social bookmarking within its own intranet, the company got some attention for the attempt.  When Honeywell established a presence in Second Life, it received the same.  But, taken together, these beginnings - and their continued existence - make for an interesting picture.

As The Motley Fool’s Tony Shute (affectionately) puts it, “Honeywell Geeks Out.”  Shute then goes on to explain how each of the two projects have affected the company.

Social bookmarking may be the clearer case, so we’ll start there.  “Using software from startup Connectbeam, Honeywell employees can bookmark and tag documents, see which other users tried similar searches, and create knowledge groups through social networking,” writes Shute.

He goes on to compare Honeywell to - gasp! - the king of Mountain View.  “Thinking about my own frustrating experiences as a cubicle dweller, I can see this approach clearing up a lot of problems with information flow.  Google Enterprise Search doesn’t go nearly this far.”  Google sometimes fails - we all know this.  But for one of its search products to get “beaten” is very unusual.

Yet Honeywell’s Second Life-related endeavor may not put it in quite the same distinguished company.  As the corporation joined the virtual world, Second Life’s own Eloise Pasteur wrote, “Honeywell have taken a cautious approach compared to many large companies, with a couple of small builds to see how things work in Second Life, and what is possible.”

Still, Honeywell appears to be doing some things that put it ahead in the virtual game.  I’m now going to think about how to apply the company’s name to a MySpace- or Facebook-type website.