http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/scl/papers/watercooler/group2009 Cross-referencing enterprise social media with an enterprise directory can increase inter-group communication. As organizations scale up, their collective knowledge increases, and the potential for serendipitous collaboration between members grows dramatically. However, finding people with the right expertise or interests becomes much more difficult. Semi-structured social media, such as blogs, forums, and bookmarking, present a viable platform for collaboration--if enough people participate, and if shared content is easily findable. Within the trusted confines of an organization, users can trade anonymity for a rich identity that carries information about their role, location, and position in its hierarchy. This paper describes WaterCooler, a tool that aggregates shared internal social media and cross-references it with an organization's directory. We deployed WaterCooler in a large global enterprise and present the results of a preliminary user study. Despite the lack of complete social networking affordances, we find that WaterCooler changed users' perceptions of their workplace, made them feel more connected to each other and the company, and redistributed users' attention outside their own business groups. To appear at GROUP 2009. Michael J. Brzozowski 2009-03-17 00:00:00 blogs social media hp watercooler attention GROUP http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/scl/papers/watercooler Visibility, attention, and recognition drive participation in internal corporate social media. watercooler blogs attention social media hp CSCW Blogs, wikis, and forums can break down geographic distances, workgroup boundaries, and organizational hierarchy in an organization. While these tools significantly lower the barriers to producing content, employees may perceive there to be little incentive to invest their own time in providing this content for public consumption. We found that increasing visibility often motivated employees to participate and contribute content. Employees were motivated by the opportunity for attention, and the ways in which social media tools enabled or hindered this opportunity influenced the way it was used. In this paper, we describe the design and use of the internal social media platforms at Hewlett-Packard and examine the ways that employees used these tools. Specifically, we explore ways in which designing for increased visibility and providing opportunities for recognition improve the ways that social media platforms can be used in organizations. To appear at CSCW 2008 Workshop on Enterprise 3.0. Michael J. Brzozowski and Sarita Yardi 2008-10-13 15:27:00