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Socialtext Enterprise Wiki blogs

Weblog on the Business of Social Software by the Socialtext team

Social Media in Government Headed for MainstreamYesterday

Since Alan Lepofsky and I spoke last month at Social Media for Government, I've been having a lot of conversations with beltway folks. There's a ton of interest in social media in government. It all started back in 2006 when the intelligence community launched Intellipedia as a community-based forum for sharing vital information across intelligence agencies. I started getting involved with government uses of social media when I joined Socialtext in the fall of 2007. Since that time, the community has come a long way. Here are some trends I'm noticing:

Government folks are really jazzed about social media. Within all industries, there's some level of excitement and passion for social software. In government, it's off the charts. I think that's because there's such a high level of frustration with existing rules and restrictions. People are dying to talk to each other, and to free themselves from the restrictions that government processes have put in place. Intellipedia was an inspiration to many, many agencies and individuals.

It's not just Intellipedia anymore. The government community is savvy about social software. It's not just Intellipedia, and it's not just wikis anymore: people are talking about and using blogs, wikis, social networking, and micro-blogging. They're using proprietary to

Scoble Interviews on Social Software and the EconomyDecember 31 2008

Robert Scoble stopped by yesterday to chat about the economy and social software with myself and CEO Eugene Lee.  He just posted a blog entry and three videos:

Part I. What will happen to both large and small companies during downturn? What are they seeing from their enterprise customers? (Hint: record sales so far this quarter but great uncertainty for next year).
Part II. Discussion of corporate pain of email.
Part III. Ross tells me about socialtext’s alumni network and how that can help both companies and workers who are laid off.

What's New in Socialtext 3.1December 19 2008

Since the release of Socialtext 3.0 in September, we've been hard at work adding several exciting improvements.  I'm happy to tell you that all of our servers have now been upgrade to version 3.1.  Many of the enhancements in this release were based on your feedback.  We love working with our customers, please keep the input coming.

Below are just a few of the new features you'll find in Socialtext 3.1.  For a more complete list, along with screenshots, please this page in the Socailtext Customer Exchange.

Discover People

Profiles now display not only who someone is following, but also who is following them. This is very useful in building social networks, especially for new employees or people joining a new project or group. This also allows you to see who is following you, providing you a better understanding of who is paying attention to your work.

Embed Your Favorite Productivity Tools Within Socialtext

You can now easily add Microsoft Outlook to access your calendar, contacts, and tasks, as well as YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations, and other powerful tools.

Corporate Alumni Network offer for the 2009 RecessionDecember 17 2008

With record layoffs in the 2009 Recession, more former coworkers are turning to each other to get jobs and start new businesses. In less turbulent times, large employers would invest in hosting Corporate Alumni Networks for sharing connections, knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, just when corporate alumni need to leverage these networks to find jobs and start new companies, HR departments find such projects stalled.

Almost four years ago PeopleSoft employees experienced a massive layoff similar to what is happening today (Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers; Sony plans to lay off 8,000 workers in its electronics business worldwide. Bank of America may cut 35,000 starting in the beginning 2009. Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be at risk for layoff).

A grass-roots PeopleSoft Alumni Network was formed by former employees, both on LinkedIn and Socialtext. Community leaders used Socialtext to share job information, get organized and collaborate on events. They later gained permission to call their newly formed non-profit organization the PeopleSoft Alumni Network. To this day, over 800 recruiters tap the network of over 3,000 members.

I asked PeopleSoft Alumni Network organizer Steve Tennant to comment on his experience:

"Socialtext was an invaluable technology for team collaboration at a time of need.

Collaboration and Social Networking 2009 PredictionsDecember 15 2008

Forrester analyst Gil Yehuda offers a perspective of Enterprise 2.0 collaboration as either driven by IT, or from the bottom up by the Line of Business, what he calls tech populist.  And given the present recession, offers an outlook:

I predict that IT-driven internal collaboration initiatives will be squeezed tight: 1. they are usually more expensive than the Tech Populist options. 2. IT is being asked to sacrifice projects, and they would rather cut fat, not bone. Meaning, they'd rather protect their bread-and-butter IT infrastructure from being outsourced. And 3.The business considers projects initiated by IT to be less vital. Remember who pays the bills.

However, for business-driven internal enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration projects, I see growth. Why?  Because the business will find their collaboration needs to grow in 2009, while they see IT providing them with fewer services. Collaboration needs grow as a result of layoffs, mergers, and deepening external partnerships (requiring new infrastructure to collaborate outside the firewall with trusted, external partners).  And this happens while IT's services shrink as a result of layoffs, a focus on streamlining operational costs, while not taking on new projects.

Who wins? The SaaS based collaboration vendors: folks like Box.net, GroupSwim, Jive, OneHub, PBwik