March 2009

Are you Intranet Famous?

By Alan Lepofsky | March 31, 2009, 11:12 am | 2 Comments

In 1968 Andy Warhol said “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Why settle for 15 min, when today by openly sharing information inside your company, you can help your organization and your peers succeed, making you Intranet Famous forever?

To celebrate being Intranet Famous, this week at Web 2.0 Expo In San Francisco, Socialtext is going to give away:

A one year, 100 person license, Socialtext hosted account, worth $18,000.
The runner up with be getting one of these limited edition Intranet Famous t-shirts.

To enter participants need to scan in their conference badge, and then on Twitter post their testimonial about Socialtext. Make sure to include the #socialtext hashtag so we can gather up all the responses. Be creative! Winners with the best testimonials will be picked this Friday.

So tell us, what are you doing to be Intranet Famous?

WikiBirthday 2009: 14 years of collaboration

By Alan Lepofsky | March 26, 2009, 8:50 am | 2 Comments

Happy Birthday Wiki.

“March 25th marks a very special day in the history of the Internet. 14 years ago on this day, Ward Cunningham publicly launched the revolutionary technology that is the wiki.”

Socialtext is very proud to play such an important part in the history and adoption of this great technology. As the first company to bring wikis to enterprise customers, we are thrilled to see how the features and usage of wikis have grown.

“Through wiki, we discovered an organic way of working together online, one that would come to be known as The Wiki Way.”

While working together online is still one of the core concepts of collaboration, it is important to note how wikis have evolved. Rather than remaining a standalone tool for creating and sharing information, Socialtext has moved wikis forward, integrating them into a larger platform that includes employee profiles, social networks, social messaging, spreadsheets, and dashboards.

So Happy B-Day wiki, and congratulations to everyone at AboutUs.org. Also, please visit Wikipediarevolution to learn more about the new book covering the history of the site that made wiki a household name.

ROI of Social Networking for TransUnion

By Ross Mayfield | March 23, 2009, 8:50 am | 4 Comments

Internet Evolution interviewed TransUnion CTO John Parkinson about the ROI of Social Networking. It is relatively early in their use of Socialtext, but they are already achieving significant success. Here is the sidebar article, quoted in full:

Transunion Finds Cost Savings, Seeks More

Can’t put an ROI on social networking? TransUnion CTO John Parkinson has his: an estimated $2.5 million in savings in less than five months while spending about $50,000 on a social networking platform. The savings comes from buying less stuff. TransUnion is one of the big three credit report companies, and it runs on a lot of custom software code. Instead of buying more gear to improve IT performance, employees are brainstorming ideas across larger groups on the company’s Socialtext platform. “The savings mostly come out of teams that would have historically said, ‘Buy me more hardware’ or ‘I need a new software tool’ or ‘I need more processing capacity,’ who figured out how to solve their problems without asking for any of those things,” says Parkinson.

While the estimated ROI numbers look promising, Parkinson stresses that wasn’t why TransUnion got started with social networking. He thought it would meet a need for employees, and, just as importantly, “I wanted to defend against too much of this going on in public,” he says.

TransUnion knew it was time to provide an internal social networking tool when people started asking for permission to set up an employee group inside Facebook. So the company did a quick survey. About 2,000 of its 2,700 employees were using some kind of public social networking tool. Since the company deals in credit reports, it wasn’t keen on employees gathering to talk shop on the public Web. So the IT team set up Socialtext inside the company firewall. Parkinson liked the features of the online network Ning but decided he needed the software on its own network for security.

The Socialtext platform has profiles, a wiki capability, and instant messaging. Perhaps most powerfully, employees can use it to ask questions of a broad group. People can tune their settings to allow all questions or allow only those from certain groups or people. But all the questions and answers get written to the database. The platform lets people vote on answers they like. It also has tools to analyze which answers people are reading and using to solve problems, and how answers correlate to topics that are most valuable to the company.

Here’s where this idea gets even more interesting. TransUnion is studying usage data to learn who’s best at solving business problems raised in the social network. With that, it’s experimenting with new job descriptions for a couple of them, so that handling these questions within the forum is a formal part of their role.

“It was never very clear to us, looking in, who the authoritative sources were, who was good at solving problems,” Parkinson says. “Now we can see a lot of that because we’re starting to see patterns emerge, to see who’s following whom, who’s the good source of questions, who offers good answers. All those things that you sort of know by the grapevine, we now have data for.”

TransUnion’s Socialtext platform co-exists with Microsoft SharePoint, which has some of the same wiki and networking tools. Parkinson draws the line this way: If an activity is part of a formal process, the collaboration should happen in SharePoint. In bringing on a new customer, for example, many formal steps are involved, and SharePoint has workflow tools that allow for collaboration while making sure the necessary hand-offs happen and the process is completed. “On the other hand, if I want to improve the process of bringing on a customer, I launch a discussion on Socialtext,” Parkinson says.

Extrapolating on the company’s success so far, he hopes the platform can deliver $5 million to $8 million in total savings this year. The platform only went live in October, and company-wide in January. Will the momentum continue? Will people find uses that are less productive? Parkinson isn’t declaring victory yet, but he likes what he’s seen.

– Chris Murphy (cjmurphy@techweb.com)

case study, social networking

Social Media Buyers Guide

By Alan Lepofsky | March 12, 2009, 12:18 pm | 0 Comments

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Chris Heuer on his Social Media Buyers Guide Podcast. Along with Blake Cahill of Visible Technologies, we discussed some of the important considerations in purchasing social media technologies, and what customers should know to help drive successful adoption.

News & EventsTips & Tricks

It is webinar week at Socialtext

By Alan Lepofsky | March 9, 2009, 1:15 pm | 2 Comments

I wanted to invite you to join the free Socialtext training webinars I am putting on this week. The sessions will be interactive, with time for questions. Come learn how to get the most out of Socialtext:

Introducing Social Messaging and a New, Dynamic Desktop Application

Wednesday, March 11th, 2pm Eastern Standard Time

Learn how to use the new social messaging capability (Socialtext Signals) and the free new desktop app to to spread news and updates like wildfire, and keep up-to-date with everyone in your network.

Please download Socialtext Desktop before the event (it’s free). You’ll find a quick video and screenshots on the same page.

Feature Walk-through For New Users

Thursday, March 12th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

If you’re just getting started with Socialtext, attend this session to learn the basics such as using your personal home page (Socialtext Dashboard); updating your profile with a picture and more; adding co-workers to your social network, and creating great-looking workspace pages.

Using Advanced Socialtext Features To Your Advantage

Wednesday, March 11th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

Have you been using Socialtext, and would now like to improve the appearance and usefulness of your pages? This session with teach you how to add rich content such as RSS feeds, Google searches, embedded videos, maps, instant messaging, and more.

I look forward to see you there.

Alan

Socialtext Desktop, training, webinar

Socialtext Signals and Socialtext Desktop Buzz

By Ross Mayfield | March 3, 2009, 9:46 am | 0 Comments

You might have seen some of the buzz from today’s launch of Socialtext Signals (video) and Socialtext Desktop (video). I really encourage you to try the new Adobe AIR app, a real-time way to use Socialtext. Here is what the press and blogosphere is saying:

Socialtext Collaboration Platform Gains Microblogging – PC World

“Each communication and collaboration tool demands a different degree of effort and attention. Writing a Signals entry is a small gesture, so by itself it generates a small amount of value. But put together with everyone else’s gestures, you get a collective view of what’s going on, which is important for companies that want to execute better,” Aparicio said.

Socialtext Brings Status Updates to the Enterprise – Mashable

Frankly, Socialtext’s approach makes a lot more sense than some of what we’ve seen so far in the “Twitter for business” market. By connecting status updates with a broader suite of business applications and activity streams, it would seem to make connecting the right people and information easier, versus needing to use yet another application. Of course, it also means you need to implement Socialtext within your organization, which is a decision that will be based on a lot more than just its microblogging features.

Socialtext Adds Twitter-like “Signals” And a Desktop AIR App – TechCrunch

In yet another sign that this will be the year of the activity stream, Socialtext is adding a Twitter-like message stream to its enterprise wiki/workspace service, The new feature is called Socialtext Signals, and it appears both as a widget in the Socialtext dashboard and as a standalone desktop app built on Adobe AIR.

Socialtext Desktop, Socialtext Signals

What People are Saying about Socialtext Signals

By Ross Mayfield | March 3, 2009, 7:01 am | 0 Comments

What customers are saying about Socialtext Signals, in 140 characters or less:

Signals is zeitgeist for your company without the angst for IT. Want better execution? Simply improve awareness of what is already going on.

Sam Apracio, Chief Technology Officer, Angel.com

Signals allows students to blast a digital nugget of importance to the class. It’s a digital espresso shot that makes us all smarter.

John Gallaugher, Associate Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College

I’ve been predicting the convergence of Wikis, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Socialtext Signals just made it a reality.

Montgomery Flinsch Electronic Publishing & Media Technology Services, Mayo Clinic

Signals has awesome potential to help us sell more. We are using it with our sales and marketing teams to sense and respond to new opportunities.

Valerie Jenkins, Director Marketing & Communications, Serious Materials

Signals lets us spread great ideas like wildfire and extinguish bad ones rapidly. That’s value for our clients and our firm.

Lisa Palmer, Sr. Vice President at Davies Public Affairs

Status and page updates help our global staff and community feel connected real-time; almost as if working in a single office.

Claudia Miro, Director, Client Services, Emergent Solutions

E-mail is linear but our business is dynamic. The beauty of Signals is brevity, speed, and instant collaboration

Vice President and Co-founder, Voce Communications

SocialText is my preferred dashboard for projects that transcend the firewall & with the addition of Signals, upgrades us to Enterprise 2.1

Chris Heuer, Creative Social Media Strategist & Coach, AdHocnium

What do you have to say about Signals? Tweet it and we will add the best contributions here.

Socialtext Releases Signals Microblogging Application for the Enterprise

By Ross Mayfield | March 3, 2009, 7:00 am | 0 Comments

Twitter-style Application Expands Socialtext’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform with Secure Social Messaging Application — Socialtext Desktop Public Beta, Powered By Adobe AIR

Palo Alto, CA – March 3, 2009 – Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 Solutions, today announced general availability of Socialtext Signals™, the Twitter-style social messaging interface for the Socialtext platform. Socialtext Signals provides customers simple and efficient information sharing capabilities, and further expands the company’s enterprise social networking and collaboration platform. Socialtext also announced the public beta availability of the Socialtext Desktop, a rich desktop application powered by Adobe® AIR®, for monitoring and participating in social networking, collaboration and social messaging.

Here’s what customers are saying about Socialtext Signals, in 140 characters or less:

“I’ve been predicting the convergence of Wikis, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Socialtext Signals just made it a reality,” says Montgomery Flinsch, Electronic Publishing & Media Technology Services, Mayo Clinic.
“Signals allows students to blast a digital nugget of importance to the class. It’s a digital espresso shot that makes us all smarter,” said John Gallaugher, Associate Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College.
“Signals let’s us spread great ideas like wildfire and extinguish bad ones rapidly. That’s value for our clients and our firm,” said Lisa Palmer, Sr. Vice President at Davies Public Affairs

The official release of Socialtext Signals introduces the same micro-blogging style of open sharing that today’s popular public tools offer, but keeps the conversations secure within the framework of the organization. Unlike standalone “Twitter-clones,” Socialtext Signals™ provides an integrated user experience for social messaging across the Socialtext platform, such as the ability to Signal in context of wiki editing. Socialtext Signals™ amplifies, clarifies and complements other collaboration activities, eliminating the need for playing “email volleyball” with attachments and allowing coworkers to transparently work and collaborate on common goals.

Socialtext Desktop is built using Adobe AIR technology, a cross-platform runtime and key component of the Adobe Flash Platform. Within Socialtext Desktop, Adobe AIR enables a persistent, rich interface for automatic notification of Signals (what people are saying and sharing) and Updates (automatically generated notifications about what people are working in: wiki edits, blog posts, comments, profile edits), with the ability to post at your fingertips. Socialtext users can download the public beta of Socialtext Desktop at http://socialtext.com/products/desktop.php. For more information about Adobe AIR, visit www.adobe.com/go/air.

“The rich experience that Adobe AIR provides for Web applications outside of the browser is a perfect match with Socialtext’s unique flexible SaaS-hosted and SaaS-appliance delivery,” said Bryant Macy, director of product marketing for the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Socialtext Desktop is a great example of how Adobe Flash Platform technologies can be used to create intuitive, highly interactive business-critical Web applications that improve productivity in the enterprise.”

“As the enterprise landscape transforms to incorporate social media tools, many customers told us of their need to integrate a micro-blogging function into their existing collaboration platform,” said Eugene Lee, CEO, Socialtext. “Signals creates a new workplace environment that amplifies and complements other collaboration activity, allowing individuals to transparently work and collaborate on common goals through a secure social messaging application within the organization.”

About Socialtext

As the Enterprise 2.0 leader, Socialtext applies Web 2.0 technologies to the critical challenges facing businesses. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, partners, and customers. Socialtext provides hosted and appliance-based solutions to more than 4,000 customers world-wide, including BASF, Boston College, CondeNet, Epitaph Records, IKEA, Intel, MicroStrategy, MWW Group, Nokia, SAP, Sunguard, Symantec, and USA Today.

Socialtext’s flagship product, Socialtext Workspace, is the first enterprise wiki and the foundation of the connected collaboration platform. Socialtext People enables enterprise social networking. Socialtext Dashboard provides personalized and customizable widget-based interface for people and teams to manage attention. SocialCalc is the social spreadsheet for distributed teams. These products deliver connected collaboration with context. Learn more about Socialtext at www.socialtext.com.

Media Contacts:
Voce Communications
Gina von Esmarch
(415) 203 4660
gvon@vocecomm.com

Yasemin Krause
(415) 848 2579
ykrause@vocecomm.com

Socialtext Desktop, Socialtext Signals, Twitter

March 2009

Are you Intranet Famous?

WikiBirthday 2009: 14 years of collaboration

Happy Birthday Wiki.

Social Media Buyers Guide

It is webinar week at Socialtext

Introducing Social Messaging and a New, Dynamic Desktop Application

Wednesday, March 11th, 2pm Eastern Standard Time

Feature Walk-through For New Users

Thursday, March 12th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

Using Advanced Socialtext Features To Your Advantage

Wednesday, March 11th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

Socialtext Signals and Socialtext Desktop Buzz

Socialtext Collaboration Platform Gains Microblogging – PC World

Socialtext Brings Status Updates to the Enterprise – Mashable

Socialtext Adds Twitter-like “Signals” And a Desktop AIR App – TechCrunch

What People are Saying about Socialtext Signals

Signals is zeitgeist for your company without the angst for IT. Want better execution? Simply improve awareness of what is already going on.

Signals allows students to blast a digital nugget of importance to the class. It’s a digital espresso shot that makes us all smarter.

I’ve been predicting the convergence of Wikis, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Socialtext Signals just made it a reality.

Signals has awesome potential to help us sell more. We are using it with our sales and marketing teams to sense and respond to new opportunities.

Signals lets us spread great ideas like wildfire and extinguish bad ones rapidly. That’s value for our clients and our firm.

Status and page updates help our global staff and community feel connected real-time; almost as if working in a single office.

E-mail is linear but our business is dynamic. The beauty of Signals is brevity, speed, and instant collaboration

SocialText is my preferred dashboard for projects that transcend the firewall & with the addition of Signals, upgrades us to Enterprise 2.1

Socialtext Releases Signals Microblogging Application for the Enterprise

Twitter-style Application Expands Socialtext’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform with Secure Social Messaging Application — Socialtext Desktop Public Beta, Powered By Adobe AIR

About Socialtext

About This Blog

Weblog on gaining business results from social software.

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March 2009

Happy Birthday Wiki.

Transunion Finds Cost Savings, Seeks More

Introducing Social Messaging and a New, Dynamic Desktop Application

Wednesday, March 11th, 2pm Eastern Standard Time

Feature Walk-through For New Users

Thursday, March 12th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

Using Advanced Socialtext Features To Your Advantage

Wednesday, March 11th, 12pm Eastern Standard Time

Signals is zeitgeist for your company without the angst for IT. Want better execution? Simply improve awareness of what is already going on.

Signals allows students to blast a digital nugget of importance to the class. It’s a digital espresso shot that makes us all smarter.

I’ve been predicting the convergence of Wikis, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Socialtext Signals just made it a reality.

Signals has awesome potential to help us sell more. We are using it with our sales and marketing teams to sense and respond to new opportunities.

Signals lets us spread great ideas like wildfire and extinguish bad ones rapidly. That’s value for our clients and our firm.

Status and page updates help our global staff and community feel connected real-time; almost as if working in a single office.

E-mail is linear but our business is dynamic. The beauty of Signals is brevity, speed, and instant collaboration

SocialText is my preferred dashboard for projects that transcend the firewall & with the addition of Signals, upgrades us to Enterprise 2.1

Twitter-style Application Expands Socialtext’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform with Secure Social Messaging Application — Socialtext Desktop Public Beta, Powered By Adobe AIR

About Socialtext

About This Blog

Weblog on gaining business results from social software.

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