Scott Karp was a little put-off by Yahoo! Mash's treating its users like teens.

There's been some reporting of gamer culture seeping in to the workplace. Onlife, gaming and cyberculture influence players from 18 to 40 who, many assuming leadership roles in the last decade. Their notions of teamwork, intimacy/privacy, goal discovery, and measures of success change how we work and why.

Many industries are becoming adhocracies and wirearchies where personal brand and informal organization match or supersede formal hierarchy. Starting with email, blogs, and wikis, and now with twitter, Skype, and social networks, we're inventing and deploying tools for the new workplace.

So while Mash's clothing may appear goofy, put on your work hat and imagine how, with a few small tweaks you might adapt it to the new world of work.

• For example, past "my friend" and "best friend" add: my immediate supervisors, direct reports, peers, bowling team, chain of command, community of practice, customer, in-my-organization, partner, supplier (and other elements you might pluck from SAP or Salesforce).

• Imagine widgets enabling views of projects, your work schedule, internal news, what your colleagues are working on, risks/threats of the day/week worthy of your attention.

• And populate your bio with answers your community cares for: claims to fame, places you've traveled and lived, things you know / can do / understand / teach.

Innovation is as likely to start in consumer products as anywhere else, and many find their way into industry despite futile resistance. Among other nifty things, Mash brings direct manipulation to its blog/socialnet user interface, a portent of portal upgrades to come.

I'm not convinced Yahoo! particularly cares about the biz business. They got out of since they never made money sans advertising from office tools.

So I'm cruising for those capabilities that will find their way into other services, services I'm likely to smuggle into my daily work life. Yahoo!'s Pipes, Upcoming and flickr are everyday tools for me at work, as are Skype, Google desktop search, docs, mail, and calendar. Wouldn't it be interesting if Mash joined them?