Intranet Journal
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Socialtext 3.0 Announces Enterprise Collaboration Solutions
10/20/2008
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."SocialText 3.0 is built on these very technologies and consists of:
Each tool is powerful in and of itself but the true benefit lies in the integration of the three. You can catch a quick video tour of the trio of applications at "SocialText 3.0 in 60 Seconds."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.
Socialtext Dashboard
The dashboard is the one stop shopping for all your activities. Since Socialtext Dashboard supports the Google OpenSocial gadget standard users can customize their dashboard to see all relevant information from Socialtext, other applications, and the Internet.
The power of the dashboard to tie it all together cannot be overstated. From one screen you can see all your feeds, the people you are following, recent conversations, updates, and other RSS feed content from within Socialtext, your existing corporate applications, or the Internet.
As you "follow" people, you receive automatic updates from the system on your dashboard as to what people are doing, what information is being updated, and the status of projects of which you are a member.
Ross Mayfield, chairman, president, and co-founder explained "The problem with traditional dashboards is that the user can usually only view what they are 'supposed to have' and therefore have limited customize abilities. With Socialtext Dashboard, users can customize a great deal and the relevant content is served based on the patterns the user exhibits while working in the collaborative spaces versus a predefined algorithm."
Mayfield recently told me the key descriptor for Socialtext 3.0 is "Connected collaboration with context." Besides being a great alliteration, what that means according to Mayfield is that "Socialtext is a robust collaboration tool with workspaces that encourage knowledge sharing and productive collaboration while providing a way for you to manage your attention." The context part is important because we are all overwhelmed with information each day. With this tool you can customize so you only get messages when others change things of relevance to you.
Socialtext Signals
This new product is not yet released but has been announced as part of the Socialtext 3.0 product release. Socialtext Signals provides a safe and secure micro-blogging platform within the context of the larger Socialtext platform. It will integrate with all the other offerings to provide the context around what and why someone is signaling. This sets it apart from standalone "Twitter-like" tools.
Signaling is expected to add value by:
Socialtext Signals is currently available in controlled pre-release to a select number of customers.Helping to reduce the signal to noise ratio with information. Turning weak signals into strong signals by elevating issues through individual conversations and updates. Allowing people to ask questions and find helpful answers without interrupting people the traditional e-mail blast way.
Technology
The Socialtext suite of products is offered both as Software as a Service (Saas) hosted solution and as a behind the firewall managed enterprise appliance.
The workspace and profile content are built on REST and SOAP APIs and are complemented with standards-based Widget architecture for the creation of enterprise mashups. Productized Connectors are available with Microsoft Sharepoint and IBM Lotus Connections. Profiles are integrated with LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory for population and maintenance of a single directory. RSS feeds support ATOM Publishing Protocol standard and are password protected. Socialtext uses SSL protected browser access and single-sign on for integration with existing systems.
About Socialtext
Socialtext provides Web 2.0 technologies to help address some of the critical challenges facing businesses today: increasing business productivity, stimulating innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, partners, and customers. Socialtext offers hosted and appliance-based solutions to more than 4,000 customers worldwide.
Socialtext has offices in Palo Alto, Calif., New York, and London You can grab a free trial and learn more about Socialtext at www.socialtext.com.
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