Community Platform Central Desktop Joins the Microblogging Fray

Written by Steven Walling / June 22, 2009 10:15 AM / 3 Comments

Central Desktop, a leading SaaS collaboration platform, has entered the ranks of those adding microblogging capabilities. The announcement comes as part of the first day of Enterprise 2.0 conference.

Twitter-like short messaging is the hot new supplement to the feature set of collaborative tools, and there are more than a few startups that revolve around standalone microblogging. But rather than a new interface within the platform or a separate app, the new addition is seamlessly integrated in to Central Desktop's preexisting activity stream.

No-frills Functionality

Inside the platform, which is suited to both public and private communities, microblogging appears as very simple updates that lack nearly all the features of Twitter or the more sophisticated enterprise alternatives like Socialcast.

An update appears in your Central Desktop stream, nestled among task lists and other notices. While you can comment on individual updates, there are no "@" replies, no drawing in RSS feeds, and no keyword tracking. Despite the simplicity, there is some external reach, with an easy check box to push your update to Twitter or Facebook.

I Love the Smell of Integration in the Morning

Central Desktop has wagered on the fact that "it just works" simplicity is a smarter bet within the enterprise than scads of features. With microblogging at least, they're one of the few collaborative solutions that has taken the imperative to integrate with the rest of their platform as their number one priority, even at the expense of functionality.

Comments

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"a leading SaaS community platform"

Steve, this looks to me to be a workspace or teamware solution rather than a community platform. Do you guys at RWW class those together or do you distinguish them?

Posted by: Joe Cothrel | June 22, 2009 11:52 AM

Joe,

There's generally a bright line difference between a community platform and a workspace. But I view this as something of a borderline case.

I was told Central Desktop positions itself as a "SharePoint alternative," so you wouldn't be wrong. But they also very strongly emphasized the ability for information to flow in and out of the firewall as companies see fit, which from my perspective makes them much more of a hybrid than pure teamware. There are definitely some notable cases of it being used in a public fashion. I've changed that description to avoid any confusion.

Posted by: Steven Walling | June 22, 2009 12:08 PM