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04.22.10 Socialcast Adds New Features To Their Enterprise Micromessaging Platform  By Bill Ives Socialcast was one of the first enterprise microblogging providers (see 2008 post: Socialcast Brings Twitter Style Functionality into the Enterprise) and I have covered them several times since that first post (e.g., Socialcast Adds Broadcasting Capability to Enterprise Microsharing). Recently, I spoke with CEO Tim Young on the latest developments, which turned out to be quite a list. We started at a high level. Tim sees a major shift in enterprise collaboration happening every twenty years: the business telephone exchange was introduced in the 1950s, the FAX in the1970s, email in the1990s and now activity streams - through tools like Socialcast - are starting to play a major role right on time, in 2010. I think there is certainly a movement beyond siloed email to the more transparent enterprise 2.0. Activity streams may be the tool that carries this transparency throughout the enterprise to reap the opportunity for increased awareness that enterprise 2.0 brings. Socialcast is focusing its efforts on helping large enterprises, in particular those of 10,000 or more employees, increase their collaboration capabilities. I think this is a smart move given their capabilities and the market. To support this strategy they have made a number of moves, including enhanced features that we will look at: Outlook and SharePoint integration, and increased support for mobile devices. BlackBerry support has been added to their existing iPhone support, with an interface geared to align with BlackBerry features. All of these should appeal to the large enterprise user. They now refer to their role in the large enterprise as providing the enterprise activity stream engine or EASE. This capability can be deployed as a SaaS, a private cloud, or on-premises. New features include the addition of automated updates to the stream based on user actions. Through their REST API they can mine these automated updates from almost any enterprise applications such as a CRM, data warehouse, or logistics system. Users operating within these systems can also submit manual updates in the traditional Twitter style without having to go into the Socliacast application itself. When someone replies to an update the reply is called a comment and it starts a threaded discussion on the topic. In addition to the traditional microblogging follow/unfollow capability, there is the option for a universal update stream that users within a particular group can automatically follow using the enterprise's LDAP. Socialcast can play in the foreground as the common interface to what is happening across many applications. Or it can operate in the background allowing users to stay within those applications. Email is one example of this. You can have Socialcast updates go into the email system, or you can use the email system to update Socialcast. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog. |
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