Organizational charts have long been used to depict reporting structures inside corporations. For that reason, they are often kept close to the vest. A new wiki site called CogMap aims to change that. They have created an interface that takes org charts and and turns them into wikis that anyone in the world can contribute too. Cogmap is doing to org charts what Wikimapia did to topographic maps.
CogMap users already have started up org charts for a bunch of large publicly traded companies, including Google, Yahoo and others. However, the site goes beyond the big boys and reaches into smaller businesses too, including esoteric ones like a lawn care company. You can search the site by organization or by company.
This is going to spook a lot of companies. Now, there's no way to know if these org charts are accurate once you get beyond the executive suite. Still, as Wikipedia has showed us, once the network effect takes over, the quality of information may get a lot better. It would be great as CogMap ramps up to give companies a place to verify information - should they even wish to.
