PBWorks Goes For A Real-Time Future

Written by Alex Williams / November 2, 2009 4:23 PM / 6 Comments

The real-time web is proving itself disruptive in the enterprise space. But it's not viable unless users may utilize technologies like live editing or voice collaboration on top of a real-time environment.

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference over the next few days we will be watching companies that give users the ability to integrate voice and other technologies with intuitive, real-time capabilities.

In that regard, we look favorably on PBWorks' new collaboration offering.

PBWorks is formerly PBWiki. In its early years, the company focused on providing wiki technologies. But like a number of companies in the wiki space, PBWorks is now more of a real-time technology company more than a wiki provider. We find the wiki space challenging as many of the original providers got their start during a time when "portals" still dominated the enterprise. Wikis worked as a complement to portals. "Web pages," by their very definition, are far more related to "documents," than activity streams.

In this regard, we view the real-time web as a true disruptor in the enterprise market. But it can not act alone. A full product must have core collaborative elements such as voice collaboration. Web conferencing is a start but it still requires users to use an application separately from the other services they may use. Voice collaboration is a far better method as it is integrated directly into the application.

PBWorks cited Google Wave in their demo. They say PBWorks is a ready product, offering unified collaboration. Google Wave is still in beta mode.

Perhaps, but to be fair, PBWorks' users will have to wait until early 2010 for voice collaboration.

New features for PBWorks include:

IM Collaboration: The ability to keep abreast of what others are doing in real-time. Updates appear within an instant message environment. Users may send a link within the IM message to tell other users what they are editing.
Live Notification: Users can be alerted to new content or other events in real-time. Users may mark different wiki pages by "starring," or "following" particular pages. When those pages are edited, users receive a notification.
Live Editing: Users may watch documents get edited in real-time. Users may edit and use IM Collaboration to form ad hoc meetings.
Voice Collaboration: PBWorks' voice collaboration service will be available in early 2010. It will provide the ability to initiate conference calls within the application. Think Skype integrated not a collaboration service.

PBWorks' new offerings are a clear sign the Enterprise 2.0 space is growing up and will change significantly with the advent of the real-time web. Documents are not going away but the messaging layer is widening in the enterprise, filling it with lightweight technologies that can be used instantly, without the hurdles that come with asynchronous notifications.

Comments

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I used PBWorks before this last iteration and has powerful capabilities. Strikes me that it’s most recent version is similar to features in Google Wave. Not sure I would pay to get those features I have in Google Wave.

Posted by: nintendo ds spiele | November 2, 2009 8:44 PM

I'd agree with Nintendo. Why pay when you can get something for free. Not everyone will have a PBWorks account and therefore collaborating will be tough - Google is the king of word-of-mouth and viral marketing and will be very tough to beat.

I'm pretty sure that at the same time, business will not adopt real time just yet. One of the most worrying things is knowing what someone is writing when they are writing it. It opens a legal minefield surely? Will companies really go for this?

Maybe in time, but for now I still see the collaborative effort lying in the hands of companies like Glasscubes and Zoho...

It took years for IM to catch on, people are becoming more sceptical about what messages are being stored and I just can't quite see this taking off in the immediate future. That said PBWorks does look like a nice product, if a little too complex for majority of ludites.

Posted by: Steven Johnson | November 3, 2009 1:22 AM

"Real time editing" is going to become the next buzzword in collaborative software. The feature, as implemented in Wave, is certainly impressive (if you can find someone to sit down and edit at the exact same time you're doing it). But is it really that useful? I question the value of being able to have two people type into a single document at the same time and see each others changes in real time vs. a simple merge of two edits (which is how most wikis handle concurrent editing now). Same result, less eye candy, less distraction.

Posted by: Matt Wiseley | November 3, 2009 11:59 AM

Good trend spotting. Combining applications currently in use with real time collaboration tools is the (pardon the pun) wave of the future. Although Google Wave is still in beta ( see http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/news/?p=51 ) it will not be long til it is the 800 pound gorilla in this space.

Posted by: Avery Otto | November 5, 2009 6:00 PM

An informative article. Thanks for the post.

Posted by: Touchworks | November 13, 2009 5:27 AM

The problem with the folks like Google & Yahoo is that they have created many tools which have been loosely coupled. The challenge with such a solution is that the the information gets locked into multiple silos. With Google Wave they are trying to integrate all the conversations (discussions) but what would be truly desirable is a platform built form ground up using social networking at the base and business apps on top of it. I have tried Injoos Teamware (www.injoos.com)they have used Injoos+DimDim+Zoho for the team collaboration,hey work beautifully together and found it captures both informal and formal knowledge like documents in one single workspace on the cloud.

Posted by: horse chestnut | December 20, 2009 9:28 PM