That whole "Facebook of..." thing is a pretty common description these days. It makes sense, Facebook is wildly popular (even we have a Facebook page) and 4 years ago we were called Facebook for Scientists, which didn't make a lot of sense at the time since writing science on the Internet existed before Facebook.
And if scientists were that social they would be on the actual Facebook more. They just aren't, as a bloc. Regardless, IBM thinks if they build it, scientists will come and their sweetener is it will help researchers get funding.
What? Researchers get private funding? That punctures the modern belief that only the government funds research. It will use IBM's content analysis algorithms to recommend potential collaborators (ummm, they are called competitors in science, just like anywhere else - content analysis would identify Tom Brady as a potential collaborator of Peyton Manning) and find recent news.
