Earlier this week, Socialtext hosted a webinar with Forrester Research analyst Rob Koplowitz discussing enterprise Web 2.0. Unfortunately Socialtext experienced some technical difficulties with its web conferencing provider, so many folks were unable to join the live event. The good news is that the webinar was recorded and an on-demand archived version is available. If you are interested in viewing the event, click here. Or if you would just like to download a copy of the slides that were presented - including some great market research and insights from Forrester - you can download them here.
Recently by Jeff Brainard
Socialtext extends wiki with new Dashboard and People modules
Jeff Brainard April 17, 2008 - 9:05 AMIn advance of next week's Web 2.0 Expo, Socialtext today announced that it has built upon its wiki foundation to launch a broad set of Business Social Software solutions. Two significant product innovations -- Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People -- extend the wiki platform for people to gain additional insight by managing their information, conversations and connections. Socialtext also launched four core Solution Areas: Business Social Networks, Collaborative Intelligence, Flexible Client Collaboration and Participatory Knowledgebase. The business social software launch heralds a new direction for the company, in the works since CEO Eugene Lee took the helm five months ago. Click here to read the full press release or visit the pressroom to view screenshots of the new functionality. Already Socialtext has received strong coverage of its announcement, including articles on Techcrunch, Mashable and Webware. If you are interested in learning more about this announcement or seeing a live demo, contact Socialtext sales.
The editorial staffs of eWEEK and sister publications CIO Insight and Baseline recently named the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT. In order, to come up with this year's list, they looked for people who not only had a tangible track record of IT success, but also had far-reaching influence, the ability to effect change and a deep level of engagement in developing emerging technologies. As "a thought leader in the burgeoning Web 2.0 collaboration software market," Ross Mayfield, Co-Founder, Chairman and President of Socialtext was recognized as one of the most influential people. This says a lot about Socialtext's understanding of social software and the priorities of IT managers and executives responsible for deploying these technologies, including wikis and blogs. href="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/The-Top-100-Most-Influential-People-in-IT/">Read more
Mike Gotta from Burton Group recently posted this interesting blog on the culture of collaboration. Many businesses (and many of the customers that Socialtext works with) struggle with this issue, namely whether the right culture is a prerequisite of Web 2.0 collaboration success inside the enterprise. As Gotta points out, a business can be successful in driving adoption and business value from these tools, including blogs, wikis or social bookmarks, even in situations where the 'right' culture does not exist primarily "when participation is more or less directed by role, workflow, and functional duties." But to achieve the higher levels of participation and emergence - the promised land of enterprise Web 2.0 - then the adoption of the tools become less important and the culture and other organizational dynamics become more fundamental. Read more
The new 'Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration & Social Software 2007' was released earlier this week from Gartner. Socialtext is positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant. Additionally, Socialtext provides the best-of-breed wiki for the Intel-led SuiteTwo bundle, which was also placed in the Visionaries Quadrant. Click here to view the Magic Quadrant graphic.
The publication of this report indicates that the Web 2.0 technologies that comprise 'Enterprise 2.0' have gone mainstream and enterprise clients are actively moving to select and deploy team collaboration and social software tools, including wikis. This has been reaffirmed by other leading analysts that identified 'social software' as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 and one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Analyst predictions on the overall market size and growth rate are extremely bullish, in fact exceeding $3 billion by 2011 by some accounts. Read more
A recent article in the Ryerson Review of Journalism spotlights an interesting application of wikis. In this case the producers of Spark, a weekly show about technology and how it affects culture, ask listeners for feedback before the program airs. Using a wiki provided by Socialtext, listeners can make suggestions on show topics, share their knowledge with other listeners, ask questions of upcoming guests, and even interact with the Spark staff. In February, Spark took the wiki and open participation model to the next level when they aired "The Collaboration Show," an entire episode comprised of input from the audience on a script posted online. With tools like the wiki, "all this interactivity means listeners now have the ability to help decide what will make it on air." Read more
A recent blog post from analyst Colin Bush at Ferris Research discusses how "organizations everywhere are struggling with the problem of how to retain corporate knowledge through employee churn and an aging workforce" and how "many are looking to wiki-based technology to develop a corporate knowledge-bank." The blog covers the well-documented benefits of wikis for helping to centralize and organize valuable information assets, as well as making it easy for users to contribute by editing or commenting on wiki pages. With that said, the "challenge with this technology is getting users, especially management, to contribute" and - much like what happens with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems - until "employees see value, adoption can be slow." Bush points out that "support by senior management, as well as an intuitive layout and preloading of some key information, are key aspects to a successful corporate wiki." Read more
On March 13th, Socialtext will be hosting a webinar with Forrester Research analyst Rob Koplowitz discussing enterprise Web 2.0. For business people, the webinar will provide valuable information on how your business can benefit from these new technologies, like wikis, as well as recommended use-cases and guidelines for deployment. For technical people, the webinar will cover the challenges around data and platform consolidation, managing security and policy control, as well as how these new Web 2.0 tools integrate with existing IT systems, like Microsoft Sharepoint. To sign-up for this free, on-demand webinar, you can register here.
CIO Magazine recently published an extensive article on how to build your own Wikipedia. The article provides step-by-step details on how to employ wikis as a valuable business tool to organize content assets, communicate about business processes and manage the collective know-how of an organization. For a business wiki to succeed "a clear focus is essential" and "the wiki's structure sets the tone for its future use, and thus its value." The article also stresses the need for having an active gardener to help prune the wiki over time to help maintain the structure, as well as encourage active converations.
As CIO Magazine points out, it's important to select the right wiki technology platform and vendor-partner to meet your requirements. For example, Socialtext is highlighted for helping "companies structure, deploy and maintain their wikis" and leveraging the experiences gained from its clients, like Boston College, Epitaph Records and IKEA. Ultimately, for a wiki to succeed, people have to use them and a key step is promoting and publicizing the wiki. "Make everyone who might benefit from using the wiki aware that it's available to them. Executives should mention it in their communication with the company, whether that's via email or newsletter, or at company meetings." Read more.
In other news, a recent Ragan Report article discussed how long-time Socialtext customer, Eastwick Communications, is using wikis to "make great progress in reducing confusing email traffic and in providing a common location and platform for maintaining important client and agency-related documents." For example, a few months ago Eastwick used its 'Eastwiki' as the central communications tool for the 'Going Green' event it was managing for Fujitsu. By using the wiki, paper and printing costs were reduced, plus the average event-specific email traffic was cut by 40 percent. The environmental and cost benefits of using the wiki have been felt agency-wide at Eastwick, since "the tool has reduced the agency's use of paper by about 15 percent." href="http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=0E729EE5399B4A69BAD372CDA7D8DA41&SiteID=200A048A0048468280B5F02A21F36800">Read more.
Forrester Research recently published a report entitled "Walking The Fine Line Between Chaos & Control In The World Of Enterprise Web 2.0" that discusses how enterprises are using Web 2.0 tools today. The report describes how "the gulf between individual productivity tools and formal tools like Web content management has been filled by wiki vendors like Socialtext... Wikis enable groups of people to work together to generate and publish content. People who flock to wikis because they are fast and easy to use are increasingly employing them to develop documentation and policies, record meeting agendas and minutes, draft course syllabi, prepare reports, perform competitive analyses, support new product development, brainstorm ideas and strategies, and much more."
In the Forrester report, some valuable recommendations are provided for how customers - concerned about the potential for Web 2.0 technologies to inroduce unmanageable chaos into their organizations - can manage this risk. For example, the report discusses how documenting policy and educating employees can be valuable, how most people overall tend to want to do the right thing, and how fundamentally Web 2.0 tools are transparent which takes away places for people to hide and creates greater overall visibility. Read more
