Because of my role working with Socialtext's partners, for me, the most exciting thing about this week's introduction of Socialtext 3.0 is the opportunity to quickly expand our partner ecosystem.

The Socialtext 3.0 platform enables our customers to choose from the over 100,000 widgets that have been developed based on the Google OpenSocial Gadget standard.  Many of these widgets provide popular extensions that are great complements to the collaboration capabilities inherent in our platform.  And, we are working with a number of new developers to create additional widgets to add to this portfolio and make available to our SMB and enterprise customers.

This activity around new Google OpenSocial development is in addition to the work being done on Socialtext connectors to other enterprise systems.  The new Socialtext People profile combines the information available in a company's LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory system with the business social networking features available with 3.0.  Socialtext is also working with its developers and partners to add to the capabilities of our connectors that integrate Socialtext 3.0 with IBM's Lotus Connections and SocialPoint which enables integration with Microsoft SharePoint.  We are working with our customers and partners to prioritize additional system integration opportunities for Socialtext 3.0, so stay tuned!

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2008 has been an exciting year here at Socialtext. The company has rapidly expanded beyond its origins as a wiki vendor, to become a key leader of innovation in the enterprise social software industry. We've announced the addition of Socialtext Dashboards and Socialtext People, as well as Socialcalc which is currently in private beta.

This expanded portfolio results in significant benefits to our over 4,000 customers around the world, and also offers huge opportunity for our partners. Therefore, we're excited to announce today the Socialtext Partner program. This program will provide system integrators, resellers, consultants, application developers and solution providers with the things they need to be part of the growing Socialtext ecosystem.

Some of the benefits to Socialtext Partners include:

• Grow sales opportunities and revenue with Socialtext's business social software platform
• Offer added value to your existing customers by providing integration between Socialtext and other enterprise software platforms
• Build extensions and plug-ins to Socialtext's platform to expand distribution and visibility of your offerings
• Provide Enterprise 2.0 consulting services to customers, helping them successfully purchase, implement and adopt social software

The Socialtext Partner program also provides great benefits to our customers including:

• a catalog of products and solutions showcasing additional features available for your users
• consulting expertise available to help
• a way to identify partners they can trust

Please see the Socialtext Partner website (http://socialtext.com/partners) to learn about the Partner Program and Partner Directory, or contact us at partners@socialtext.com.

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Socialtext is partnering with a variety of firms that provide Enterprise 2.0 and business transformation consulting services. Through these partners, and our own Professional Services group, we have long concentrated on delivering solutions, not just software, to our customers. Socialtext's four core Solution Areas announced last week evolved from this work and, now, they enable our partners to focus and expand the value they are providing to their clients. And, in addition to delivering these solutions to our customers, we use these same solutions to manage our relationship with prospective, new and established partners. We set up a wiki with each new partner that provides efficient and organized access to the Socialtext information needed to be successful. It really accelerates the productivity of new partners to have a central location for information and interactions with us, rather than a series of disconnected emails. Now, with the introduction of the Socialtext Dashboard, partners will be able to personalize the presentation and navigation of this information to best suit their business needs. One of the greatest benefits of these solutions is the direct and open feedback channel we get with partners. Participation is not limited to Socialtext channel management; participants include product development, marketing, customer support and others that benefit from the current information provided by the field and the sharing and communication in both directions that result. We add further immediacy to this channel by providing our partners with a number of NFR licenses that they can use, in turn, to collaborate with their clients. Last, but not least, I am really excited about the introduction of Socialtext People. The rapid expansion of our global partner ecosystem means that we can't meet face to face with our partners as often as we would like. Socialtext People provides another great tool to enable our partners to get to know us better and for us to better understand their strengths and be able to search for particular expertise needed by our customers.

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