Posts tagged ‘Socialtext Signals’

Why Enterprise Microblogging Must Be Integrated with Other Social Apps

By Christopher Lynch | February 3, 2010, 3:30 pm | 0 Comments

Although enterprise microblogging has emerged as a key technology to enable better collaboration between employees, it holds the greatest business value when it’s integrated with other bits of social and enterprise software. That’s the overall theme in an article today by Clint Boulton of eWeek. Detailing a recent Gartner report, Boulton writes that “while more than 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging by 2012, stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.”

The predictions reflect what we’ve experienced in the market with customers. One of the reasons our customers have derived business value from Socialtext Signals (our microblogging tool) rests in the fact that it integrates well with social tools in our platform. For example, when saving a workspace page, Socialtext can automatically post a link to the page in Signals, making it simple for your colleagues to discover and access the updated content.

In the article, Garner also predicts that “70 percent of IT-led social projects will fail.” This bolsters our contention that line of business (LOB) people make the best champions for social software because they feel the pain points in their daily processes very tangibly. This is not to say IT won’t play an important role. In allowing enterprise social software to integrate with other enterprise systems in a secure environment, IT is a critical player and needs to work closely with LOB champions and vendors to provide this integrated experience.

A significant downside to standalone enterprise microblogging tools, which isn’t cited in the article, concerns security and control. As some of these free, niche tools crop up organically within companies — and employees begin to share private, proprietary information over them — an IT administrator must pay the vendor providing the service just to get control of logins, passwords and the domain the employees set up to host the information. This isn’t a true freemium model; it’s an extortionist sales model.

business value, enterprise microblogging, security, Socialtext Signals

Serendipitous Signals: How Microblogging Helps the Sales Process

By Scott Schnaars | January 6, 2010, 2:17 pm | 0 Comments

The serendipitous nature of enterprise social networks continues to amaze me. Take what happened here last week here at Socialtext over our microblogging platform, Socialtext Signals.

One of the reps on my sales team Signaled that she just gave a demo to a prospective customer at a very large company. Less than 5 minutes later, our director of marketing responded (via another Signal) that his brother is CIO at that company, and how can he help? An offline conversation ensued, an introduction was made, and now we are having conversations at a level we would have had to work 10 times as hard to get.

People in your own company probably have a closer level of connection to your customers — and potential customers — than you might think. To make sure those connections happen, you need an open environment where you can ask questions, find the right people, and get answers. That discovery process is much harder without a tool like Signals. In e-mail, information becomes locked away. If our director of marketing, for example, hadn’t been CCed on an e-mail message about that potential client, we never would have found out that he had a connection there that could help.

My guess is that a simple message — such as “I’m trying to get in to BigCo, can anyone help?” — to a company of 1,000 people will initiate responses from 5 – 6 people who at least might know someone. From relatives to close family friends to old acquaintances from past lives, they might have an in. In most cases, they will be stronger introductions than anything you’ll get from LinkedIn or any public social network.

Selling is hard work. You need to have a lot of different moving parts all line up in order to get a signed contract. One of those things is getting all of the right people on board. This requires a lot of skill, planning, presentation and sometimes, a little bit of serendipity.

enterprise microblogging, sales, Socialtext Signals

Socialtext Enjoys Record 2009 Performance

By Christopher Lynch | January 4, 2010, 9:02 am | 0 Comments

Momentum fueled by doubling of user base, record quarter-over-quarter bookings growth.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Socialtext enjoyed a record-breaking year in 2009, setting its highest quarter-over-quarter bookings growth in the company’s history. Businesses are turning to Socialtext’s social software platform to gain higher levels of employee engagement, commitment and performance not achievable in the past. As the leading enterprise social software company moves into 2010, it expects continued growth in new bookings and renewals, and another record year in overall bookings and revenue.

“In 2009, there was a collective awakening about the value of greatly improved knowledge flows among a company’s greatest asset, its people,” says Eugene Lee, Socialtext’s CEO. “In 2010, social software will become a staple for enterprises looking to improve the way their employees communicate and get work done.”

Large and midsized enterprises across many industries — including media, health care, manufacturing, and technology — have deployed Socialtext so their employees can collaborate more easily and tap each other’s expertise, enabling them to stay connected, aligned and informed. With greatly improved knowledge flow and teamwork, these companies can now respond faster to changing market conditions and new revenue opportunities. In doing so, they better meet the needs of their customers.

“Socialtext got all my smart people pulling in the same direction.”
Don Smith, Vice President of Customer Service, OSIsoft

“People call it the single most useful tool that Davies has introduced to staff, period.”
Brandon Edwards, President & COO, Davies

To meet customer demand for its enterprise social software platform, Socialtext is expanding, hiring across multiple departments in 2010. While Socialtext is looking forward to the coming year, highlights from 2009 include:

From Q1 to Q4, the company grew bookings by more than 200 percent.
The company grew its customer base to 6,500, while active users doubled.
Each quarter, the company beat its record for renewal bookings.
Bookings growth from customer expansions nearly tripled, in large part due to organic adoption of Socialtext’s fully integrated social software platform inside companies.

“Once people saw what they could do with Socialtext, each business unit started their own social software revolution.”
Steve Brewer, Customer Connection Mgr. & Systems Integration,
FONA International

Socialtext released its Microblogging appliance, allowing companies to deploy secure, private microblogging enterprise-wide very quickly, and then expand into other uses of the Socialtext social software platform later, such as deploying a social intranet, a social corporate directory, and letting the activity streams and other automated mechanisms do the work of keeping the organization informed.

“With microblogging from Socialtext, people understand each other more, and they know what others are doing. This lets us respond more quickly to new opportunities.”
Tim Eby, General Manager, St. Louis Public Radio.

Socialtext shipped SocialCalc, the first and only social spreadsheet integrated with a social software platform, developed with VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin. SocialCalc has allowed companies to stay in touch with the state of the business.

“With SocialCalc, I can go in at one point in the day and see what’s going on in all our active campaigns right now. It helps us distribute information and knowledge faster, so we can react more quickly.”
Dave Ball, Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Meredith Corporation.

Socialtext Desktop allows people to access the Socialtext platform via a fast Adobe AIR app, providing a real-time experience for Activity Streams and Signals.
The new Socialtext Mobile brought the enterprise social software platform to employees on-the-go.
The company’s new service partners program complements their in-house professional services organization and ensures customers get the fastest adoption and path to strategic business results.
The company launched a “freemium” package that allows companies to get up and running with secure microblogging in minutes, providing a replacement for microblogging networks that have cropped up organically among employees, and that are neither secure or IT-friendly.

About Socialtext:

As the enterprise social software leader, Socialtext applies Web 2.0 technologies such as microblogging, social networking and wikis to the critical challenges facing large and mid-market businesses. Socialtext’s enterprise social software platform allows employees to share expertise, speed workflows and get their jobs done faster. Socialtext provides hosted and appliance-based solutions to more than 6,500 customers world-wide, including EgonZehnder, Epitaph Records, Mayo Clinic, McGraw-Hill, OSIsoft, Symantec and The Washington Post. Learn more about Socialtext at www.socialtext.com.

SOURCE Socialtext

Socialtext Signals Helps Companies Work at the Speed of News

By Christopher Lynch | December 9, 2009, 2:06 pm | 0 Comments

Wondering what the value of enterprise microblogging could be for your company? Since we launched our microblogging tool, Socialtext Signals, we’ve been gratified to see how our customers have used it to free the flow of work inside their organizations and derive incredible business value and improved collaboration among employees.

Take our latest case study of an organization using Signals: St. Louis Public Radio. The station, which has been around for nearly forty years, possessed some classic communication and collaboration challenges. As we highlight, SLPR’s internal communication mechanisms (mostly e-mail and phone) were causing overloaded e-mail inboxes and slowing the time it takes to serve the station’s members. People used e-mail as a crutch when they couldn’t find the right people and information to solve their business challenges. Now, with Signals, everyone at SLPR can ask questions openly without interupting people, and get answers that remain searchable for the future.

What separates Signals from other standalone enterprise microblogging tools is that it’s integrated with other pieces of social software, such as our Wiki Workspaces, Activity Streams, and Socialtext People, our social networking profiles that allow workers to share their expertise with each other.

As CIO.com highlighted in its article about SLPR’s use of Signals recently, the examples of how enterprise microblogging has improved the station’s internal processes have been clear to see:

For example, SLPR’s receptionist received a call from a listener who heard an announcement on the radio about an event at a local high school and wanted to know more about it. Instead of sending an e-mail blast to all staff members, the receptionist used Socialtext’s app to poll the staff, and received an answer in less than five minutes.

As we wrote in our latest business value whitepaper, when utilizing social software, organizations of all shapes and sizes can improve both their formal and informal processes to serve customers faster, react to change, and ultimately beat out competitors. SLPR has been a great example of how an organization can harness the power of Enterprise 2.0 technologies like Socialtext, and we look forward to sharing more of our customers’ experiences with you.

-Chris Lynch (@cglynch)

enterprise microblogging, enterprise social software, Socialtext Signals, whitepaper

Ready. Set. Learn!

By Alan Lepofsky | October 12, 2009, 8:05 am | 0 Comments

Are you ready to leap from the starting line and begin using Socialtext to create, discover, and share information?

Register for this week’s free online Getting Started webcast, and you will learn tips and tricks that can help get you up and running quickly.

Some of the things we’ll cover include:

Basic navigation around the system
Using your Socialtext Dashboard to discover updates and popular content
Filling out your profile, and using social networking to keep up with what your colleagues are doing
Using Socialtext Signals to update your status, ask questions, and share links
Creating wiki pages and online spreadsheets in your Socialtext workspaces

Don’t forget to invite the other people you use Socialtext with, and we’ll speak to you on Wed.

Socialtext Dashboard, Socialtext Signals, webinar

Learn About The Benefits Of Microblogging In The Enterprise

By Alan Lepofsky | September 29, 2009, 7:37 am | 0 Comments

Have you ever had a question, and knew someone in your company could help you, but you did not know who to ask?
Have you ever been going somewhere, say visiting a client, and wondered if someone else in your company had background information, or knew contacts there which they could share with you?
Have you ever wanted to share a link to news or information with everyone in your company?

Register for tomorrow’s free webcast to learn how to easily do all of these things using Signals, the secure microblogging tool from Socialtext.

Some of the topics that will be covered include:

How Signals can be used for Q&A, status updates, sharing links, providing a back channel during meetings, and other use cases
How you can access Signals from a browser, your desktop, or from your mobile device
How Signal’s secure microblogging differs from public tools such as Twitter, or other standalone microblogging only vendors

Register now for tomorrow’s free webcast, and be sure to invite your colleagues. If you have any questions you’d like to ask in advance, please post them in the comment section below.

enterprise microblogging, Socialtext Signals, webinar

Getting Answers Via Internal Microblogging

By Alan Lepofsky | September 23, 2009, 8:13 am | 1 Comment

From Question To Answer In Seconds

I love when I personally experience one of the benefits, that we marketing people hype up when pitching to customers. Here is a true story…

This morning I was setting up a new soft-phone on my MacBook, and I could not get it to connect to our PBX. I searched for the information in our wiki, and while I did find the setup instructions, I was having problems with connecting. Did I call the HelpDesk, or email Support? No. I posted the question on Socialtext Signals, our internal micro-blogging platform.

Within seconds, a coworker (in Taipei) provided me the answer and I was up and running.

To be clear, this is not about adding extra responsibilities to your Support staff by having them monitor yet another location. You can see that I asked this question openly, with no expectations of who would answer. Asking questions openly provides the opportunity for anyone in the company to answer. Audrey is not in Support, but she had the answer I needed, and was able to easily reach out and solve my problem.

Internal microblogging enables anyone to help everyone. Regardless of job function or time zone, people can share the knowledge they have to assist others.

How would you have found the answer at your company, and how long would it have taken?

If you are not using Signals today, I encourage you to give it a try.

News & EventsTips & Tricks

September Means Education

By Alan Lepofsky | September 7, 2009, 4:30 pm | 0 Comments

The kids are all back to school, so why not sign up for a little education yourself?

Each Wednesday in September, Socialtext is hosting free online education sessions. You can register here, and make sure to invite your coworkers.

September 9: Getting Started – We’ll start with a general overview of the various components and features of Socialtext, and finish with examples of creating workspace pages, sending Signals, and more.
September 16: Using Powerful Features To Your Advantage – In this hour we’ll look at some of the more advanced features you can use to create great looking content in Socialtext workspaces.
September 23: Using Socialtext Signals and Desktop – This session will focus on using the Socialtext Desktop client, and highlight the use of micro-blogging (Signals) to communicate with your colleagues.

If you have any specific items you want to make sure we cover, please post a comment below.

Socialtext Desktop, Socialtext Signals, training, webinar

Product UpdatesTips & Tricks

Enterprise Microblogging Goes Full Screen

By Alan Lepofsky | May 28, 2009, 8:22 am | 0 Comments

With the recently released Socialtext 3.5.4, people can now access Socialtext Signals via a full screen view in their browser. This new interface makes it easy to read and respond to Signals, post new Signals, and see the people in your social network.

The hottest thing in collaboration these days is using micro-blogging to ask questions, share links, or update your status. Enterprise micro-blogging (or micro-sharing) tools enable people to send short messages to everyone in their organization. However, unlike similar public facing tools, the information is available only to people securely inside your company firewall.

Organizations are quickly beginning to see the value in these transparent forms of communication. Benefits include more people being able to contribute to conversations, and most importantly, more people can benefit from the knowledge being openly shared. That means faster, better informed decisions can be made, and everyone in the company can feel more closely connected.

But busy employees don’t want to learn “yet another tool”. So Socialtext developed Signals as an integrated component of our collaboration and social networking platform. This way people can send messages and link to content, right in the context of what they are currently working on inside Socialtext.

The first of version of Signals was available as a widget on Socialtext Dashboard. Next, we released a dedicated client for Socialtext called Socialtext Desktop which included a tab for Socialtext Signals. Now, with Socialtext 3.5.4 people have a third option, the full screen browser interface.

You can read about other new features, such as hiding table borders, sending private Signals replies, email type-ahead and more in the Release Blog on the Socialtext Customer Exchange.

enterprise microblogging, Socialtext Desktop, Socialtext Signals

Twitter is the new headline: how blogging and social messaging are complementary

By Adina Levin | April 29, 2009, 8:41 am | 0 Comments

Recently, media critic Jay Rosen mocked this post as dumbest newspaper column about Twitter ever. In the column, a game critic blogger at the New Orleans paper attempted to parody Twitter by writing his review of an xbox game in 140 character increments. The reason the reviewer’s approach is silly is that the columnist misses the complementary relationship between Twitter and blogging. If you are writing an article, you don’t write the article itself on Twitter. You write a normal essay, and then share the link on Twitter with a catchy phrase.

Is Twitter really killing blogging?

There is a common meme Twitter is killing blogging, since bloggers are now spending their time and sharing their ideas on Twitter. As Robin Hamman observed last fall in this Headshift post, Twitter (and Facebook) are siphoning off a lot of the energy from personal diary blogging – the proverbial post about what I ate for lunch – or blogging for simple link sharing. Anecdotally, some bloggers observe that they post less frequently because they tweet ideas more often.

While Twitter may be siphoning blog energy from very short posts, Twitter also increases interest in more substantive blog posts and discussion around blog ideas. An increasing amount of blog traffic is driven by status updates from Facebook and Twitter. Through link posting and “retweets” – the social custom of forwarding a link or quote to one’s Twitter followers, , the social network is used to share and spread interesting posts and call attention to good bloggers. Essentially, Twitter is the new headline.

Professionals use social messaging to develop ideas.

On the public internet, reactions and conversation about blog post ideas are taking place in Twitter, in comments on Facebook status updates, and on FriendFeed, a site that aggregates and enables discussion about links and updates from many social media sites together. A number of online journalists are developing rich processes for developing ideas using these social media. Journalism professor Jay Rosen uses phased process, using Twitter for mindcasting short thoughts and links, Friendfeed for assembling links and ideas together with discussion, and his blog to publish long-form essays based on the ideas. Scientist and science blogger Bora Zivkovic writes about a similar social journalistic workflow, carrying the process from ideas shared in Twitter through composing articles and books. Yahoo social design expert and blogger Christian Crumlish has used the workflow starting with Twitter and extending through writing a book, using a wiki as a tool for book editing and feedback for O’Reilly’s Designing Social Interfaces. Using these workflows, these professional journalists and bloggers are developing higher quality ideas and documents through turbo-charged idea sharing and peer review.

Value in the Workplace

The relationship between social messaging and blogging can be particularly valuable in the workplace, where social messaging is used to call attention to timely and relevant work-related posts and updates. Sharing blog posts, links and wiki updates using Socialtext Signals enables timely discussion without interrupting people’s work day.

Making it easy to share and discuss motivates people to write useful posts, and update information on wiki pages, because they know they know the content will be shared, discussed and used with colleagues – they are not just contributing content into a black hole. Socialtext Signals is designed to facilitate this sort of sharing – when adding new content, writers are prompted to share a summary of the update on Signals. And we’re sensitive to business confidentiality – only people who have permission to see the content can see the Signal about the new content.

In summary, social messaging and blogs are highly complementary. The role of Twitter and Socialtext Signals isn’t to limit thoughts to what can can be expressed in 140 characters or less, it’s to call attention to longer-form writing, and to improve those ideas within the social network. Using the techniques of turbo-charged peer review being developed by professional bloggers and journalists, organizations can use social tools to be smarter and more responsive.

Facebook, Socialtext Signals, Twitter

Newer Entries Older Entries

Posts tagged ‘Socialtext Signals’

Why Enterprise Microblogging Must Be Integrated with Other Social Apps

Serendipitous Signals: How Microblogging Helps the Sales Process

Ready. Set. Learn!

Learn About The Benefits Of Microblogging In The Enterprise

Getting Answers Via Internal Microblogging

From Question To Answer In Seconds

September Means Education

Enterprise Microblogging Goes Full Screen

Twitter is the new headline: how blogging and social messaging are complementary

Is Twitter really killing blogging?

Professionals use social messaging to develop ideas.

Value in the Workplace

About This Blog

Weblog on gaining business results from social software.

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Posts tagged ‘Socialtext Signals’

Momentum fueled by doubling of user base, record quarter-over-quarter bookings growth.

About Socialtext:

From Question To Answer In Seconds

Is Twitter really killing blogging?

Professionals use social messaging to develop ideas.

Value in the Workplace

About This Blog

Weblog on gaining business results from social software.

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