"Going for a bike ride this weekend, does anyone want to join me?"
"Is anyone else having trouble with the printer on the third floor?"
"I think we should buy copies of Beyond Compare. I used it at my last company, and it was awesome."
"Hey Chuck, when you get a chance, cal you tell my team about that library you wrote? We have a few questions for you. I'll let them hop on the conversation and ask."
"I'm sharing a link to an article I found about that project we did last year."
And you can SEARCH these conversations (and the results can show up in your google.com search results, if you use that feature). Even the conversations that happened before your start date.
I think personal email is far worse, particularly because it is not visible to people who start at the company after the conversation starts.
Mailing lists are pretty good, but generally companies don't have good tools to quickly make impromptu mailing lists.
And I think you're not giving enough attention to the fact that things shared on Google+ can show up in your search results.
If you work at a Zoo, and you search for "python," it'd be great to see relevant links about the animal. If you're a programmer, it'd be great to see relevant links about the programming language.
I mean, meeting someone for lunch doesn't need to be searchable. Mailing lists are searchable at later times. Google search integrates gmail results now.
The mailing list software is a good point-does google sell Google Groups software?
"Is anyone else having trouble with the printer on the third floor?"
"I think we should buy copies of Beyond Compare. I used it at my last company, and it was awesome."
"Hey Chuck, when you get a chance, cal you tell my team about that library you wrote? We have a few questions for you. I'll let them hop on the conversation and ask."
"I'm sharing a link to an article I found about that project we did last year."
And you can SEARCH these conversations (and the results can show up in your google.com search results, if you use that feature). Even the conversations that happened before your start date.