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Socialtext recently announced and delivered Socialtext 3.0, a trio of applications that includes Socialtext People, Socialtext Dashboard, and a major upgrade to its Socialtext Workspace enterprise wiki offering. The company also announced the upcoming Socialtext Signals, a Twitter-style micro-blogging tool.

Socialtext was founded in 2002 as a wiki company. Its flagship Workspace product is a team collaboration and social network solution. The Workspace product provides a group editable wiki and weblog so teams can collaborate more effectively and increase efficiencies with capturing team knowledge. If you want to see how far the workspace product has evolved, a quick peek at these old screenshots of its original product from 2005 can be found in "Wikis + Blogs = Socialtext." They stand in stark contrast to the more integrated solution Socialtext 3.0 offers.

Rumblings of the latest release were highlighted earlier this year in "Socialtext Embraces Facebook-Inspired Tools." In this article are some staggering figures that drive home the direction of enterprise spending as it relates to the very Web 2.0 tools included in the new Socialtext 3.0 applications:

Forrester Research predicts that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013. According to a recent Forrester report: "In 2008, firms will look to invest in the most well established Web 2.0 tools -- namely, wikis, blogs, and RSS."

Upgrades to the Socialtext Workspace product for team collaboration and social Intranets.

Socialtext People which is a Facebook for the enterprise.

Socialtext Dashboard which is a user customizable dashboard offering a variety of drag and drop widgets for personalization.

Socialtext Workspace

As already mentioned, this is the flagship Socialtext product that brought wiki and social Intranet solutions to the enterprise. This major upgrade was based on engagement and feedback from existing customers and includes usability enhancements, improved navigation, more administrative efficiency, directory integration, and the tight integration with Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People. These integrations alone take what was "just a wiki" and make the information and activity contained there part of your everyday work flow.

Pages within workspaces are grouped by tags and a user can access multiple workspaces from within their own custom dashboard. In this way users can easily edit and review content that is relevant to them. Here's what it looks like:

Socialtext People

Socialtext People is social networking adapted for the enterprise. Profiles and a user directory enable people to subscribe to the activity of their colleagues and discover other expertise within the organization they can tap into. Profiles are made visible throughout the Socialtext wiki so you can pivot to the people behind the content at any time. Integration with LDAP and Active Directory allows companies to make their corporate directories accessible with additional Socialtext fields added for customization to the context of social networking.

With Socialtext People you can easily see who is doing what and where the expertise and connections lie so you can do your job better.

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