Recent awards and coverage of Socialtext in leading publications. http://www.socialtext.com/news/coverage.php CMSWire December 18, 2012, 9:00 am PST Last week when we spoke with Michael Idinopulos about Socialtext’s partnership with Badgeville, I was curious about his title, Chief Customer Officer. As you may recall, earlier this year, we examined the evolving roles of the C-suite and the impact of social business within the enterprise. It’s not everyday that I meet a bona fide Chief Customer Officer, so naturally, I had some questions for him. If you were to choose any company who’d have a Chief Customer Officer, Socialtext would be a good guess, given their social collaboration expertise. But I wanted to know what was behind the title and how his views about the customer experience influence how Socialtext works. Let’s listen in. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/meet-a-real-life-chief-customer-officer-michael-idinopulos-018851.php Technology Evaluation Centers December 13, 2012, 9:00 am PST Like it or not, gamification is here to stay and help bolster user engagement. Employee engagement has become the holy grail in private companies and government agencies, as numerous studies show that engaged employees are far more productive, and stay longer than their non-engaged peers. Companies are increasingly using gamification to reward and recognize both their trading partners and their employees. When gamification capabilities are added to social software, the idea is for companies to access data and analytics that should provide much needed insight into employee behavior, and then reward employees in a way that increases their commitment to what they are doing while also keeping them aligned with company goals. To that end, Socialtext, a renowned provider of enterprise social software, announced its partnership with Badgeville, the leading gamification and behavior management platform, to infuse gamification capabilities into its variety of applications, widgets, and mobile tools. Socialtext has been engaging employees through its social technologies, and gaming dynamics are a cornerstone of that strategy. In partnering with Badgeville, Socialtext will use Badgeville Embed with the aim to enhance the overall user experience and increase engagement while better understanding user behavior. Badgeville Embed, a purpose-built offering for software providers, enables these vendors to incorporate proven engagement techniques right into the flow of their applications, with the intent to drive desired user behaviors that maximize customer value and boost their renewal rates. http://blog.technologyevaluation.com/blog/2012/12/13/socialtext-embeds-gamification-capability-by-badgeville/ CMSWire December 12, 2012, 9:00 am PST Earlier this fall, Badgeville announced the launch of its gamification and behavior management platform for Drupal. Today, enterprise social software provider Socialtext is getting in on gamification in the enterprise. Its has announced a partnership with Badgeville, in an effort to infuse gamification capabilities into a variety of applications, widgets, mobile and more. Certainly the enterprise is no stranger to gamification. By 2014, Gartner has estimated that 70 percent of the world’s 2000 largest companies will embrace gamification in some form, not to mention that with gamification companies can help create customers and solve problems more easily. But implementing gamification requires more than just adding voting buttons or providing incentives for participation. With Badgeville, SocialText is taking enterprise engagement to the next level. Through the partnership, Socialtext will utilize Badgeville Embed to enhance their overall user experience and increase engagement while better understanding user behavior. But how can we improve employee engagement with gamification? http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/socialtext-plays-with-badgeville-to-improve-employee-engagement-018712.php IT News.com December 12, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext will add gamification capabilities to its enterprise social networking (ESN) suite via a partnership with Badgeville so that its customers have more tools to increase user engagement. Through an integration with Badgeville Embed, planned for early next year, it will be possible to offer users game-based incentives to engage with the Socialtext enterprise social collaboration suite, whose features include employee profiles, activity streams, groups, microblogging, intranets, wikis and document sharing. Badgeville Embed lets companies configure reward systems to motivate employees and customers to do certain tasks within third-party software, including enterprise applications, websites and mobile apps. Employees can earn badges, awards, points, leadership recognitions and the like. Badgeville Embed also collects and usage data so that customers can analyze it and get a better sense of user engagement levels with the software in question. Gamification software has become a popular tool among enterprise IT departments that want to foster increased usage of employee applications, intranets, collaboration software and external websites. http://www.itnews.com/collaboration/52989/socialtext-adds-badgeville-gamification-features-enterprise-social-suite About.com November 18, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext has been around the block, from its early design as a mass collaboration wiki in 2002 to the full blown enterprise social software platform where it is today. In conversation with Michael Idinopulos, general manager, he said, "I like to think of Socialtext as the whole social enchilada. We are one of the few social applications with everything." Blogs, wikis, social networking, and its Socialtext Connect enterprise integrations are the new norm on desktop or mobile devices. Recently, Socialtext acquired investment capital from Bedford Funding and a partner relationship with Peoplefluent™, a leading Talent Management solutions provider. In light of its new relationship with Peoplefluent, Indinopulos said, "Social software deployment requires that it integrates the daily flow of our work lives. We are focusing on real productivity solutions that integrate well with the flow of work." Socialtext already demonstrates how its customers are working more productively on a day-to-day basis. For example, SE Railway station engineers and conductors in London carry 600,000 passengers a day, are using Socialtext on a Blackberry. And assembly workers in Twinsberg, Ohio are taking advantage of Socialtext messaging on an iPad in real-time as they go through their machine runs. http://collaboration.about.com/od/Reviews/p/Socialtext-Keeps-On-Innovating-For-The-Future-Of-Enterprise-Social-Software.htm Information Week November 12, 2012, 9:00 am PST McKesson sees specific gains as a result of making purposeful use of social networking technologies and measuring the impact. The pharmaceutical distributor and healthcare information technology company is using social business technology to unify support for its software products in the electronic medical record and practice management markets. McKesson's Physicians Practice Solutions had acquired several products in recent years and needed to consolidate support, services, documentation, account management, product development and product management. McKesson is using Socialtext's social intranet platform to enable communication among employees in its various channels, including those dealing directly with customers or with value added resellers and those providing policy and product content. McKesson measures the success of its social initiatives using key performance indicators. For example, since implementing social technology and practices the average speed to answer customer calls has decreased 66% and same-day resolution of customer concerns has improved by 12%, said Timothy Kelly, executive director of customer support. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/slideshows/view/240062675/the-brainyards-7-social-business-leaders-of-2012?pgno=8 Green Technology World October 26, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext, a provider of enterprise social software, launched a 30-day free trial giving businesses of all sizes instant access to navigate and discover the benefits of using Socialtext's social business platform. According to a release, with implementation and integration into existing practices, the free trial of the Socialtext platform provides a risk-free route into experiencing the added business benefits that social collaboration can provide to any business in any industry. "We're thrilled to offer a free trial of Socialtext so users can familiarize themselves and become comfortable with the Socialtext platform," said Michael Idinopulos, Chief Customer Office and General Manager, Socialtext. "We're tremendously proud of Socialtext and its ability to transform the way work gets done. This 30-day free trial will dramatically expand our visibility in the market and introduce the platform to limitless companies who will love it as much as we do." Socialtext has been in social collaboration for nearly a decade, delivering increased employee productivity by adding social functions into the flow of work. Departmental silos that previously hindered communication throughout an organization can now be eliminated, allowing employees to become more engaged in their company's daily business. Socialtext empowers employees with the ability to collaborate together, providing new streamline processes shared throughout their entire network. http://green.tmcnet.com/news/2012/10/26/6679141.htm Firece Content Management October 23, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext is giving your company 30 days to try its product with no restrictions. You can include as many users as you want, you can access the APIs and the mobile apps, and you can buy it or not as you see fit after the trial period. It's not exactly the freemium model used by some other Enterprise 2.0 vendors, but it's a way to test the waters without committing to the product. A 30 day trial should give you a chance to set up Socialtext in a sandbox kind of setting and figure out how it works, but the timeframe is going to be fairly limiting for many customers who may need more time to understand how to make a social software system work optimally for the organization. Unlike some software packages, it's not just a matter of installing it and understanding how it works; the social aspect of it presents unique challenges. http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/socialtext-offers-enterprises-30-day-trial/2012-10-23 Enterprise Mobile Solutions October 18, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext, a provider of enterprise social software, has launched 30-day free trial to provide businesses of all sizes instant access to navigate and discover the benefits of using Socialtext’s social business platform. The free trial provides a risk-free route into experiencing the added business benefits that social collaboration can provide to any business in any industry. “We’re thrilled to offer a free trial of Socialtext so users can familiarize themselves and become comfortable with the Socialtext platform,” said Michael Idinopulos, chief customer office and general manager, Socialtext, in a statement. “We're tremendously proud of Socialtext and its ability to transform the way work gets done. This 30-day free trial will dramatically expand our visibility in the market and introduce the platform to limitless companies who will love it as much as we do," said Idinopulos. http://enterprise-mobile-solutions.tmcnet.com/articles/312510-socialtext-launches-30-day-free-trial-familiarize-users.htm CMS Wire, October 17, 2012, 9:00 am PST Social is sweeping into the enterprise with astonishing speed. Corporations, government agencies and nonprofits are using social tools such as blogs, wikis and Twitter-like activity streams to collaborate internally, with both customers and the general public. It's an undeniable trend and it's quickly picking up speed. The opportunity is immense. Most enterprise technology is in the business of automating human tasks: taking the creativity out of work and replacing it with rigid, formal process. Social software does just the opposite; it fosters, encourages and empowers the natural creativity of human beings working with each other towards a common goal. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/hr-social-like-017775.php HR Magazine, October 17, 2012, 9:00 am PST Industrial Mold & Machine in Twinsburg, Ohio, makes custom molds for plastic bottle manufacturers and others. Most of the 40 factory workers and engineers have an iPad with access to the company’s social platform. They use the technology to help optimize the manufacturing process for each custom job. When a manufacturing problem arises, workers use the platform to access design specifications, including 3-D renderings, and communicate with other workers and engineers to solve the problem, according to Michael Idinopulos, general manager of Socialtext Inc., which created the social business platform. This can be thought of as a twist on total quality management, where the quality of products and processes is a responsibility shared by everyone. In total quality shops, any worker can stop the assembly line when he spots a problem. At Industrial Mold, any worker can initiate activities on the social platform that lead to quick solutions. "Everyone on the floor and everyone in the front office talks to each other as they get the job regrouped without calling a timeout to huddle in the office," Idinopulos says. Industrial Mold now produces 20 percent more output with 40 percent less labor, he adds. http://www.shrm.org/publications/hrmagazine/editorialcontent/2012/1012/pages/1012roberts.aspx IT World Canada, August 24, 2012, 9:00 am PST Social software now serves many functions and can provide the organization a platform to enable multiple business tasks and operations from one system. The use of mobile has further increased the capabilities of social software to provide a flexible framework that capitalizes on social technology collaboration even at the shop floor level. The case study below is from Socialtext which highlights how a manufacturing company not only decreased cycle times, saved money, increased collaboration and assisted with scheduling of resources. This is where social technology was applied to a non-traditional environment (manufacturing) of which the results speak for themselves. One of our greatest success stories comes from custom mold and manufacturing leader, Industrial Mold and Machine (IMM). They have been leveraging Socialtext not only to address their core communication issues, but also to improve manufacturing processes on the production floor. IMM implemented Socialtext as a way to share information from order to production, in essence uniting front and back offices with unified information. Additionally, IMM uses iPads, which are provided to all of their mold makers on the production floor to tie order details to the manufacturing process. Leveraging Socialtext on the iPads, enables IMM to smooth and accelerate the production process, which typically is a dynamic one, with the need to react and implement changes in real-time. With Socialtext, those changes are communicated, recorded and centralized for future learning and innovation. http://www.itworldcanada.com/blogs/insights/2012/08/24/manufacturing-and-supply-chain-go-social/63832/ Business-Software.com August 22, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext applies Web 2.0 technologies to making work easier and more collaborative. Michael Idinopulos, interim CEO of Socialtext, joined us for a conversation about how social tools have transformed the enterprise and the challenges companies face preparing for a social future. http://www.business-software.com/blog/how-enterprise-social-tools-are-transforming-the-workplace/ The Brainyard August 20, 2012, 9:00 am PST With business social networking platforms, profiles perform an important function. They allow employees to describe their skills and experience, which in turn allow colleagues looking for internal expertise to identify the right people for the right projects. Check to make sure that user profiles can be easily created and updated, and are rich and discoverable. Socialtext profiles include the kind of information needed to find the people you are looking for — whether you know them or not — to help you with a project. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/slideshows/view/240005778/enterprise-social-networks-musthave-features-guide?pgno=3 CMSWire July 2, 2012, 9:00 am PST In the early days of Enterprise 2.0, social software was great for basic, toolkit-style functionality. Blogs and wikis provided convenient frameworks and reference materials for doing customized tasks. Although, there wasn’t much functionality for businesses that ran a great number of routinized processes. Looking back, it’s amazing what we have accomplished in just a few short years. Social software has changed, and changed quickly. Over the past few years, businesses have started to embrace social software and today, social software is flooding the enterprise. We are amidst what can only be described as a social revolution, entering an age when employees can be more connected than ever before and are breaking down department silos, regardless of their geographical location. Enterprise social networking has become a valuable tool for businesses, providing a solution that encourages sharing, captures knowledge, enables immediate action on tasks and empowers employees to collaborate in real-time. This results in an escalation of work efficiency and productivity, but enterprise social software delivers more value when it crosses silos. This is how you enable new relationships to be shaped amongst employees. Examples where enterprise social software can help your business and your employees become more dynamic include: getting a question answered by the most knowledgeable person or receiving immediate assistance to resolve a challenging customer problem. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/breaking-down-knowledge-silos-with-the-social-layer-016348.php Macworld June 18, 2012, 9:00 am PST The Web-based Socialtext, for example, starts at $5000 a year for 50 users, though Socialtext tells prospective buyers that it is “scalable” according to company size. The platform can also be modified—somewhat like a Wordpress blog—with a “theming editor” that allows individual companies to configure the system with company logos and colors. The Motley Fool, the financial services company, calls its themed version of Socialtext “Jingle.” The left column features business Intranet mainstays like information about company benefits; a middle column hosts Facebook-style posts from company employees; the right column features videos and “important news” designated by company management. The Motley Fool implemented Jingle, executives said, because email had become too much of a digital water cooler—with company-wide emails about birthdays and after-hours gatherings, for example, cluttering inboxes of people who didn’t want or need the information. The Motley Fool uses Jingle—built on the Socialtext platform—to provide access to benefit information, as a virtual water cooler for workers, and to update them on the latest news. The senior leadership finally decided the company needed a change, said Jeb Bishop, The Motley Fool’s VP of cr http://www.macworld.com/article/1167041/stop_using_email_for_everything.html TechCrunch May 1, 2012, 9:00 am PST Social enterprise software maker Socialtext is today announcing having received strategic investment from Bedford Funding that will now see the service joining the Peoplefluent family of products. Bedford Funding, for those unaware, is a $1.4 billion tech investment fund and owner of Peoplefluent, the maker of Talent Management software for business customers. Following the investment, Socialtext will be integrated into Peoplefluent’s own Human Capital Management (HCM) Suite, which focuses on offering tools to help companies recruit better. With the Socialtext integration, employees on the suite will be able to collaborate with each other and their greater enterprise, the company says. Eugene Lee, Socialtext CEO, will remain CEO of Socialtext but will now report directly to Peoplefluent Chairman and CEO Charles S. Jones. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/01/following-strategic-investment-enterprise-software-maker-socialtext-joins-up-with-peoplefluent/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0 Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal May 1, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext, a Palo Alto company that makes social software for businesses, is becoming a subsidiary of talent management company called Peoplefluent, the companies said Tuesday. Socialtext isn’t calling the deal an acquisition, although that’s what it appears to amount to. Peoplefluent, based in Raleigh, N.C., is owned by $1.4 billion private equity firm Bedford Funding. Bedford has been building up a portfolio of talent management software companies that it has combined to form Peoplefluent.The companies said that Bedford is making a large investment in Socialtext, adding them to the portfolio. The amount was not disclosed. Socialtext said it will keep its name and its employees and customers will be largely unaffected, but CEO Eugene Lee will now report to Peoplefluent CEO Charles Jones. "We are the new flagship presence and hub for growth for all of the Bedford family," Lee said when I caught up with him by phone. He said Bedford has already tapped several people to relocate to Silicon Valley. Socialtext has less than 50 employees, Lee said, but he expects the company to at least double by the end of the year. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/2012/05/socialtext-becomes-peoplefluent.html Information Week May 1, 2012, 9:00 am PST Socialtext adds a social layer to Peoplefluent products and gets funding to market itself more aggressively. The technology investment fund Bedford Funding is buying Socialtext and making the social collaboration software company part of the Peoplefluent family of products, which revolve around recruiting, training, and the category known as Human Capital Management. Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee said his company will continue to compete in the enterprise social networking market as an independent subsidiary, but it will also provide a social software layer to make other products in the Peoplefluent suite work better together. Although Bedford Funding announced the transaction as a "strategic infestment," Lee confirmed the firm has in fact bought Socialtext outright. "They are now our only investor. In addition, they are providing a considerable amount of cash as working capital set aside for operational growth." Bedford created Peoplefluent from a series of acquisitions, including Peopleclick and Authoria in talent management and more recently Strategia for online training. The business was renamed Peoplefluent last June and began investing in extensions for mobile users. Now, Peoplefluent is rounding out its portfolio with social collaboration, following somewhat the same strategy as Saba, with its People Cloud enterprise social network, linked to a suite of training and capital management tools. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_private_platforms/232901271/socialtext-joins-peoplefluent-hcm-product-family Workforce April 24, 2012, 6:00 am PST Weber Shandwick built a custom system on Socialtext's platform that lets employees do things like post status updates and share video and other large graphics files. By the time it launches, the MyWeberShandwick internal communications network will include a mobile app that employees can use from their iPhones and Android smartphones. "Yes it will reduce email volumes, but more fundamentally it will allow us to more quickly deliver more of our services to clients. I think the more fundamental benefit is doing better work. A manifestation of that is happier employees and fewer emails," Fry says. "As one of the employees who'll benefit from this, less email will be a nice thing," says Matt Marcus, a Weber Shandwick employee. Fry won't know how successful his initiative will be with other employees until 2013. Other Socialtext clients already have achieved noticeable results. Hanover, for example, reduced employees' email use by 90 percent and voice mail use by 95 percent after switching to the collaboration platform, according to Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee. http://www.workforce.com/article/20120424/NEWS02/120429985/if-tim-fry-has-his-way-hell-eradicate-email-for-good TMCNet March 2, 2012, 6:00 am PST Socialtext Inc. announced that the company continued to see profits throughout 2011 and is predicting even more revenue during 2012. Socialtext Inc., a company based out of California, specializes in enterprise social software that helps employees collaborate on multiple projects. The enterprise social software comprises an integrated suite of web-based social software applications such as microblogging, user profiles, groups, dashboards, widgets, shared spreadsheets, and other collaboration tools. Socialtext said its main focus is to help businesses improve performance on a daily basis. “Socialtext accelerates business performance by making it easier for employees to find the colleagues and the information they need to solve challenges new and old,” said the company. “By simplifying people’s ability to share expertise, ideas, and corporate data, Socialtext removes knowledge silos that have traditionally hampered companies’ ability to respond.” http://online-project-management.tmcnet.com/topics/online-project-management/articles/272324-socialtext-celebrates-profitable-2011.htm TMCNet February 28, 2012, 6:00 am PST Socialtext, the leading enterprise social software provider, has announced that the company continues its corporate momentum by achieving operating profitability in 2011. Through a continued dedication to customer service and developing superior technology, the company predicts an increase in profitability for 2012. “This accomplishment has proven our business model is a success,” said Eugene Lee, CEO, Socialtext. “We are dedicated to providing the best possible customer service to our clients, offering the tools and convenience necessary to maintain and grow adoption of enterprise social networking throughout the company. At Socialtext, we don’t just sell a solution; we solve efficiency problems and help employees communicate and collaborate easily and more efficiently.” http://www.healthtechzone.com/news/2012/02/28/6151493.htm Information Week February 10, 2012, 6:00 am PST The nonprofit ClimateWorks Foundation integrates the social and content management tools to boost communication across its global network. In another example of how enterprise social collaboration is bringing organizations together, Socialtext, a leading provider of enterprise social software, has launched a strategic partnership with NetDocuments, one of the best known Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) content management service providers. One of the first entities to take advantage of the partnership is the ClimateWorks Foundation. The nonprofit supports public policies that prevent dangerous climate change and promote global prosperity. ClimateWorks is using the integrated Socialtext application to enable its global network of non-profits to collaborate on strategy, learn from others, share best practices, and reach goals faster. This is the first "social knowledge exchange" implemented in the non-profit sector, Sarah Nichols, director of knowledge management (KM) for ClimateWorks, said in an interview. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_private_platforms/232600602/socialtext-netdocuments-team-up-on-social-collaboration TMCNet January 26, 2012, 6:00 am PST If you’ve been paying attention to the news over the past couple of months, then you’ve no doubt heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, which was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. SOPA called for a crackdown on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. SOPA, which was recently killed by sponsor and House Representative Lamar Smith, would have represented a fundamental change in the way the Internet works today and would have undermined all Software as a Service (SaaS)/cloud companies. If the bill had passed, it could have been a sign that additional countries could follow suit with their own legislation which would inevitably hurt businesses operating internationally and their ability to provide services in other countries. http://www.techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/259542-sopa-dead-but-not-forgotten.htm New Tech Observer January 24, 2012, 6:00 am PST Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex) have decided to postpone further action on the piracy bills that have led to some of the biggest protests in web history. With President Obama and FCC Chairman Genachowski both agreeing that some response to piracy is necessary, the fight against the first iteration of SOPA may be over, but the task of negotiating rational legislation is just getting started. We have seen generalizations about how piracy legislation would negatively affect American business and innovation, but there has been very little time to develop a better understanding of what these negative impacts might be. With this in mind, I had a chance to sit down with Eugene Lee, the CEO of SocialText, a social networking service provider for corporations that operates on the software as a service model, to talk about how SOPA, PIPA, and future piracy legislation might have impacted both his business and the SAaS industry as a whole. http://www.newtechobserver.com/2012/01/sopa-and-pipa-lets-pause-and-write.html InformationWeek January 9, 2012, 6:00 am PST Prior to the selection of Socialtext, some employees had started using Yammer for social collaboration. Bishop said his team decided Socialtext offered the same kind of microblogging capabilities as Yammer, but could also take over managing corporate content that had been stored in the wiki or in SharePoint. Socialtext got its start as an enterprise wiki software company and has layered on social networking features. The current version of the product is Socialtext 5.0, which includes the Socialtext 360 feature for matching contacts based on interests or specialties. Bishop said he found Socialtext easy to customize for a "very Motley Foolish" look that encourages employees to claim it for their own. The company's developers have even added custom widgets to the site, taking advantage of an API based on Google Gadgets and OpenSocial. The home page features a place for the latest video produced for internal consumption, often featuring one of the company's latest premium services or ideas about how to improve service to readers and customers. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/commentary/social_networking_private_platforms/232301451/inside-motley-fools-enterprise-social-network Stark Insider December 29, 2011, 6:00 am PST Welcome to another Stark Insider 5 Questions. Today’s topic is one of our favorites: Leadership. We caught up with Eugene Lee, CEO of SocialText and friend of Team Stark to bring you the inside scoop on leadership lessons learned from musical ensembles. Eugene recently returned from TEDx American Riviera where he presented on this very subject. http://www.starkinsider.com/2011/12/5-questions-silicon-valley-ceo-eugene-lee-leadership-tedx-video-musical-ensembles.html ITBusiness.ca December 21, 2011, 6:00 am PST Six months ago, Blue Man Group had successfully performed before 17 million people around the world over two decades – but still couldn't find a way for its own 500 staff to share ideas effectively. That's where social intranet came in. The group, founded in New York in 1987 and touring the globe almost non-stop since then, called on Socialtext Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. to deploy a social intranet for its company-wide communications. http://www.socialtext.com/news/coverage-ITBusiness-Blue-Man-Group.php CIO Insight September 21, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext is that software that is used for businesses that are having problems with social media.Butch Stearns and Eric Lundquist talk with CEO of Socialtext, Eugene Lee, about how companies can take advantage of social software. http://thepulsenetwork.com/technology/cio-insight//09-21-11-socialtext/ Forbes September 13, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext, a long-time thought leader in enterprise social continues to be a leader in bringing new social capabilities to business, particularly in the mid-market. http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2011/09/13/the-enterprise-social-market-enters-teen-years/ CMSWire September 6, 2011, 8:00 am PST According to Gartner, Socialtext was one of the first vendors to position its product as a "social layer." As a seasoned soution, Socialtext offers a broad range of capabilities which include social spreadsheets, open social support and faceted search. Preintegration with SharePoint and salesforce.com, as well as a desktop client for rich activity feeds and file integration, make it a popular choice for some of the larger organizations out there. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/gartners-companies-to-watch-in-social-software-for-the-workplace-include-telligent-salesforcecom-drupal-012600.php Enterprise Irregulars August 15, 2011, 8:00 am PST http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/40611/monday%E2%80%99s-musings-a-working-vendor-landscape-for-social-business/ Information Week June 23, 2011, 8:00 am PST The AHA system uses the enterprise social network from Socialtext... Chakkarapani said the architecture is hybrid cloud, incorporating pure cloud services like Box, but with Socialtext installed inside the firewall as an appliance for better, more secure integration with Active Directory and other internal resources. http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_private_platforms/231000313/how-american-hospital-association-combined-social-single-signon CIO Magazine June 22, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext, a social software company, introduced Socialtasks, a management tool that lets teams visualize and manage tasks in a collaborative work environment. Socialtasks, the company says, consists of three main features. The first is a page tracker, which allows you to record tasks with various statuses such as new, in progress or complete. Next is the "Page Watcher Bot," a function that monitors Socialtext workspace pages for changes in the task status, and then posts a message for the group working on the task or the manager of the team. Lastly, the new Form Builder lets users create a new wiki page that provides choices for status, priority, owner and more. http://blogs.cio.com/web-20/16364/enterprise-20-conference-touts-social-product-announcements ReadWriteWeb June 20, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext today announced three enhancements to its microblogging and enterprise social networking platform to help visualize and maintain workflows. http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/06/socialtext-launches-integrated.php CMSWire April 20, 2011, 8:00 am PST Signals is probably what the social software vendor is best known for today. It's a microblogging app and an activity stream all in one. And it's where the concept of the social layer is clearly demonstrated. As Lepofsky explains, social is not just a feature that you tack on to your business systems, rather it's functionality that needs to be integrated into the underlying processes, making it a natural extension of how you work. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/socialtext-social-is-layer-not-a-feature-010789.php ReadWriteWeb April 13, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext announced today that it will release a virtual appliance that can be deployed as part of an on-premise or in the public cloud using VMware. The virtual appliance will provide all the features of the Socialtext software-as-a-service and its managed appliance. http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/04/socialtext-launches-virtual-appliance.php Fierce Content Management April 13, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee says this product makes it much simpler for IT pros to install Socialtext as part of a virtualized private cloud environment. "As a SaaS company, we want to make it easy for our customers to run our software securely, whether that's in our cloud or securely behind the firewall in their private cloud. This new offering provides yet another option for our customers who have made a commitment to VMware inside their company," Lee said This move is consistent with their recent strategy to provide tools that make Socialtext the IT-friendly Enterprise 2.0 tool of choice. Unlike other companies that are trying to win the hearts and minds of end users first, Socialtext has made a concerted effort to create tools and functionality that make it friendly for IT pros. http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/socialtext-adds-virtual-appliance/2011-04-13 MIT Technology Review March 18, 2011, 8:00 am PST Rather than being made up of random posts about what someone ate or read, most Socialtext entries are created automatically as a result of collaboration with other people. These "in the flow of work" updates happen whenever someone does something productive in Socialtext that others in the company should know about—comments on a blog post, responds to a question, edits a wiki page, or tags a profile. The idea is that people demonstrate their value to the company not by what they say about themselves but by what they do. Already, Socialtext customers like Getty Images and the American Hospital Association (AHA) have replaced their intranet home pages with Socialtext. Before the AHA implemented Socialtext, employees found it hard to collaborate with each other on issues of health-care reform, says Karthikeyan Chakkarapani, director of technology solutions and operations. "With Socialtext, we were able to integrate it into our other enterprise applications and build a one-stop platform that people can easily access." http://www.technologyreview.com/business/36955/ KM World March 1, 2011, 8:00 am PST Much of the information that GT Nexus wanted to share was available in the company, but was stored on various hard drives and within e-mail messages. The goal was to find a simple, cost-effective method of sharing information. Atherton launched a knowledge management initiative that reflected the vision he had for the enterprise program and provided a clear requirements statement. “We went through a formal RFP process, talked to analysts and developed a short list,” he explains. “Our conclusion was that Socialtext provided the best solution for our needs.” Socialtext’s platform includes online workspaces, wikis, blogs and microblogging. “We wanted an easy way to collaborate, store documents and also to send Twitter-style messages to provide a quick blast of information companywide when needed,” says Atherton. GT Nexus constructed a social intranet called the Grid, which is organized departmentally. Content relevant to sales, HR and other departments is stored and accessed on the Grid. GT Nexus has successfully integrated Socialtext with other applications, including a cloud-based software product that tracks software bugs, and Salesforce.com. “The microblogging tool, Socialtext’s Signals, is used to alert colleagues to progress on sales deals or other time-sensitive events,” Atherton points out. “We also have a central location for our technical documentation.” http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Information-sharinge28094new-options-emerge-73956.aspx IT Business Edge March 1, 2011, 8:00 am PST When I interviewed Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee last month, he told me some of his company's customers were seeing real value from making their intranets the hubs of social activity. A hub is sorely needed. As I wrote in my post "Internal Silos Can Suck Life out of Social Initiatives," organizations won't derive much value from social information if it ends up in the same old departmental silos. Lee offers several snapshots of Socialtext clients that have added social features to their intranets, including Getty Images, The Motley Fool, Fona International and GT Nexus. The webinar wraps with two folks from the AHA, CIO Jack Mackay and IT Manager Karthik Chakkarapani. The AHA's intranet serves as a centralized hub for information management, aggregation and delivery. It combines features of the "new" intranet like social tools, and integration to software-as-a-service applications using single sign-on with more traditional intranet features such as news updates and a calendar. http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/making-the-intranet-a-hub-of-enterprise-social-activity/?cs=45780 eWeek February 24, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext launched its annual refresh of its software platform, this time adding instant messaging support for IBM and Microsoft programs, as well as business analytics from Google. While many enterprise software makers of late are preaching cloud-only software approaches, Socialtext offers a Web-based solution and an on-premises software appliance that sits behind the customer's firewall. Socialtext software allows business users to collaborate via modern communication tools, including private and shared workspaces, chat and status updates. Employees at Getty Images, Symantec and more than 6,000 other businesses use these tools to share information with their colleagues. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Socialtext-46-Leverages-Google-Analytics-IBM-Lotus-Sametime-595915/ InternetNews February 24, 2011, 8:00 am PST "Mixer, our social intranet built on Socialtext, has been adopted by 95 percent of our organization," Jennifer Fox, director of learning and development at Getty Images, said in a statement. "How do you put a price on an employee coming in and knowing they can find the information they need, know it's relevant, and be more efficient at their job?" http://www.ecrmguide.com/article.php/3926156/socialtext-brings-social-networking-to-corporate-intranets.htm Baseline January 28, 2011, 8:00 am PST Skill sets played a big role at Emergent Solutions, a consultancy based in Royal Oaks, Calif. It moved from a SharePoint solution to a Socialtext cloud-based application for handling discussions and project management for its 60 contractors located around the globe. “We had learning issues with people who didn’t use SharePoint and found that Socialtext worked better for us,” says Christine Cavanaugh-Simmons, the company’s co-founder. “We also were able to get rid of all our servers, and we now have everything backed up with Mozy on its cloud service.” As a result, Emergent’s contractors are a lot more productive. “People in different countries and continents are all working asynchronously, creating agendas, materials and presentations for our customers,” she says. “There’s no waiting for a weekly meeting or status update. People can engage each other in open conversations, provide feedback and feel part of the team.” http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Utility-Computing/Successful-Cloud-Implementations-103578/ ZDNet January 6, 2011, 8:00 am PST Socialtext has announced a program that will allow Yammer users to migrate to its offerings while saving money. Socialtext argues that a suite of collaborative social tools will always win against stand alone solutions. I agree. It has always been a major weakness of microblogging platforms that they are essentially a feature set within a much more important category. Therefore any company selling on the premise that microblogging for the enterprise can win is on to a loser. I view Socialtext as a comprehensive, enterprise class collaboration suite while I tend to think of Yammer as a microblogging tool that has add ons. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/howlett/socialtext-goes-after-unmanaged-yammer-users/2740 IT Business Edge January 6, 2011, 8:00 am PST Social software companies selling to enterprises "need to make products users love but IT loves as well," said Lee. Socialtext's early entry into the social software market in 2002 (with a wiki product) has given it ample experience in working with both business users and IT organizations, he said. That experience informs how it markets, sells and supports its products. Socialtext sees its broader suite of functionality (social directories, wiki workspaces, customizable dashboards), added security options (notably a software-as-a-service appliance that can be deployed behind corporate firewalls) and the ability to integrate Socialtext software with enterprise applications as key selling points for enterprises. Socialtext offers a "richer, broader growth path from microblogging," Lee said. While microblogging is a great starting point for social software because of its ease of use, the "real value comes from integrating it with enterprise software systems." http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/subtext-of-socialtext-migration-offer-yammer-not-enterprise-ready/?cs=44999