Ariba has recently posted a few nicely done vidoes on its Supply Excellence blog and these new videos end with an oblique reference to exchange.ariba.com. I’m naturally curious, so I went to the URL.

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There, I discovered Ariba Exchange. Though I couldn’t find anything describing what I had just found, a little random pointing-and-clicking revealed what appears to be a very targeted social network of sorts. Think of LinkedIn customized specifically for spend management professionals, only with a more pleasing user interface.

Ariba Exchange – which I could not find an announcement for – features discussion boards, polls, videos, and more. Despite the initial low profile – any new technology release should be given time for working the bugs out before declaring it the best thing since sliced bread – Ariba Exchange seems to have gotten some early participation and features interesting discussions on topics like reverse auction formats and spend classification.

Because I haven’t received any press release information from Ariba, I’m not sure how much they are going to plug it. But it made a favorable first impression on me and, assuming that Ariba continues to dedicate sufficient resources to it, I expect that Ariba Exchange will become a useful destination on the Web for gaining and exchanging knowledge.