The site also offers special "In Company" features which let you network among your work colleagues differently than how you network with persons outside the company. With your "In Company" connections, you may choose to reveal a relationship with a high profile contact that you would not share to others outside the company...or the other way around. Also, "In Company" users with Silver or Gold memberships can make unlimited introductions and information requests.

Another unique feature is WhoDoYouKnowAt's Contact Data Integrity Management option (CDIM). This allows you to control who has access to your current contact information. To set this up, you fill out both your current and formerly valid, but now outdated, contact information. When your data is matched with others' contact lists, you're automatically notified. If they still retain your old contact information, you can then choose to grant them access to your new information or ignore the notice without them ever knowing.

Too Complex?

These features are only scratching the surface of what WhoDoYouKnowAt has to offer. The site has been thoroughly thought through, with seemingly every scenario or use case accounted for. There are options like Prospect Lists for connecting with contacts at targeted companies, Alerts, Relationship Rankings, and a Productivity Center for managing your connections.

In fact, if anything, WhoDoYouKnowAt might be overly complex for a niche product that aims to address only the needs of heavy-duty business networkers who find LinkedIn uncomfortably open. (Just look at that chart! Click to maximize). We suppose that, for those folks, WhoDoYouKnowAt could be the perfect solution given all its levels of privacy and trust. However, for the everyday business professional, LinkedIn or even Outlook will probably still suffice...or these days, even Facebook may work.

Until recently LinkedIn's website resembled something circa 1994. The latest overhaul of the UI makes it more accessible and useful, but still not fun - it's dominated by links, not people. What if LinkedIn refocused? What if there were elements of entertainment, story telling and human feel to the whole experience? In this post we ponder how the brand could become more fun.

Hint at Humanity - the iPhone App

When the LinkedIn App for iPhone came out I was struck by how a minor difference in user interface represents a big difference in perception. On the website, the list of contacts is dull and hard to sift through. iPhone implementation leveraged the standard widget for scrolling through lists and was spectacular.

As names of my contacts flew by, my brain started reminiscing: Oh I remember this person? Man, that was a fun project! I wonder where this person is now?.

I was compelled to click on some entries to see people's faces, to check their resumes.

The playful iPhone UI made the same LinkedIn information much more engaging. It instantly brought into the spotlight the most interesting aspect of LinkedIn - the people.

LinkedIn as Entertainment

LinkedIn is a great business tool - you can use it to find jobs or suitable candidates. It's helpful for introductions and lead generation, but it underplays human aspects of business connections. If LinkedIn were more interesting and entertaining, imagine what it could do?

The opportunity lies in a better user interface, lending itself to more exploration. A visualization like the one PicLens provides would be great fun - e.g. the ability to see peoples timelines visualized, such as 5 previous co-workers now working for Apple. It's essentially slicing and dicing information that LinkedIn has, though in a way that is playful and useful.

In addition to playfulness, there's a sentimental factor here. Enabling people to tap into their memories and recall co-workers. Imagine a flashback - your job at Yahoo. Remember Jane, John, Kate and Mike? Here's where they are now. Jane and Mike are still at Yahoo, John is engineer at Google by way of Microsoft, and Kate is working for a startup in Colorado.

Will Entertainment Pay?

Would this sort of thing help LinkedIn's bottom line? Not directly, because people are unlikely to pay for such entertainment as they pay for other LinkedIn features. But the pages would surely generate traffic and bring CPM advertising dollars. Facebook grew big because of entertainment.

It's cool to see pictures of friends, to know what they're up to, and to stay in touch. By adding this human focus, LinkedIn could become 'cool' in addition to useful.

What do you think about adding the entertainment dimension to LinkedIn? Is this something you'd like the company to do? What other features do you wish LinkedIn had?

GroupSwim is a company whose SaaS collaboration solution uses semantic technology to automatically tag and rate content including discussions, emails, documents, wikis, and more. As an Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad finalist, the company was honored for making enterprise team collaboration fun to use thanks to features like thumbs up/thumbs down voting and its ability to monitor your favorite topics.

One of the best features in the latest version of GroupSwim is the new integrated wiki application which puts GroupSwim in more direct competition with services like Central Desktop, existing SharePoint implementations, and Confluence and less directly with other wiki providers like Wetpaint, for example, as well as with other group collaboration suites like Grou.ps.

With GroupSwim's wiki solution, you don't have to learn any sort of technical markup code. Instead, their WYSIWYG editor is easy to use and lets anyone write, share, and collaborate on documents with other team members. You can insert files, images, widgets, and tables into the wiki and if you mess something up, content can be quickly recovered thanks to the wiki's versioning feature. The wiki also offers built in access control permissions so admins can specify who is allowed to edit pages.

Another change to GroupSwim is the addition of system APIs. Where before they offered only a couple (single sign-on and member management), they now have a whole host of APIs to let you better integrate their software with other third party systems your company may be using.

Other features included in the latest update are:

• Redesigned home page for feed style information across all groups
• Hidden groups that are invisible unless user is a member of the group
• New email notification permissions let you tune who can send email notifications
• Improved auto-tagging capability
• Insert files and images directly into discussions and wiki pages
• Various performance enhancements

Why GroupSwim Works

So far, GroupSwim has been so successful in making a name for themselves in the Enterprise 2.0 space, first getting selected as an Enterprise 2.0 LaunchPad finalist and more recently being selected as one of the 12 finalists out of some 85 companies to be a Preview Company at the SIIA OnDemand Conference in November.

We think the reason for the company's success goes beyond the software's feature set alone. What's really appealing about GroupSwim is how easy it is to use. After having spent years editing and uploading files to SharePoint, using GroupSwim is a breath of fresh air - it doesn't feel like work. And that's quite the accomplishment because behind the software's simple Web 2.0 interface, they offer a robust feature set which includes things like role-based permissions, private groups, support for rich media, the ability to embed both Zoho and Google Docs, the ability to add files via email, document previews on the web, suggestive search, and more.  How they managed to cram in all those features while making the software appear so easy is beyond us.

For more info on how GroupSwim works, check out this post which delves into the details of the software including its semantic features. However, the best way to get a feel for how GroupSwim works is to visit their demo sites. On this page, there are three different sites already set up for you to explore. 

You have to appreciate E's creative URL - it's memorable, but also makes you curious. E? What's E?, you wonder. When I first encountered the URL, it was in a tweet which read "I'm now using E to add friends to my Twitter account. More info on http://hellomynameise.com." Did I click though? You bet.

"E," as it turns out, is a new spin on digital contact exchange. Instead of using paper business cards, you use your phone to exchange data. At first, you may think that sounds very much like mobile contact service Dropcard, but it's not. The only similarity between E and Dropcard is that they both allow you to customize your profile online and share it with others, but the similarities end there.

To use Dropcard, you either text or use a mobile app which emails your contact info to the person you just met. With E, you go to a mobile web URL that lets you exchange a passcode with your new contact. The passcode is simply a five-digit code which is entered into the mobile web app itself. They show your theirs, you show them yours...that sort of thing. Once connected, you don't receive an email message with their contact info like with Dropcard. E goes a step further and actually adds that contact to all the services you've already integrated with E.

Service Integration

At the moment, E allows you to integrate Twitter, PICNIC (a network for the PICNIC conference), and Soocial. However, Delicious, European social portal Netlog, and LastFM are listed as coming soon. After you integrate these services with E, when you add a contact they're immediately added to all those other web services, too. And thanks to Soocial, an address book solution, E contact info can also synchronize with your email address book in Gmail, Highrise, your OSX address book, or the address book on your phone itself.

Barriers To Adoption

E faces one of the typical problems that many web 2.0 startups do - they don't work for you until a lot of people are using it. Just because you have a profile on E, that doesn't mean that those you meet do. And unlike a service like Dropcard, there isn't a way to use E without the other person's involvement.

In addition to the service itself, the developers of E came up with a crazy but interesting idea for a hardware device called the "Connector." With this device, you can exchange contact info with others just by touching the two connectors together. While gadget junkies and shiny object collectors may find this device appealing, it could easily remain a niche gadget that ends up sitting on the shelf next to your Chumby and Nazbaztag. To cross the adoption barrier, those at E would be smart to sponsor events where everyone gets a Connector at registration. After a few high-profile events, they would have industry movers and shakers on board, and that's always a good place to start. Sponsoring events may be just what the company is planning, though, since their site mentions that the "Connector will be released at large events in the near future."

Will It Work?

At present, the E service is very basic. Twitter integration is the only service of note that works yet. (Soocial looks great, but is in private beta). The profiles themselves are also not as flexible as those with Dropcard are. You can easily add and remove services with Dropcard, but with E, I wasn't even able to add a second company that represents my second job. The services section of the web site is confusing - it doesn't allow you to do anything more than customize which services are connected. The actual profile information is entered under "Settings," so you can't specify that only personal contacts get your home address, for example. It appears to be all-or-nothing.

E still has far to go to become a truly successful digital contact exchange service, but at least they're trying something different. Because they operate via mobile URL, not an app specific to any one device, they're better positioned for more universal adoption that a service that designates itself as iPhone-only, for example.

The service is in private beta testing now, but you have the opportunity to make an impassioned plea as to why they should invite you on the signup page here. (If you get in, feel free to add me: 17975.)

Check out the video below to see E in action:

Hello, my name is E from Renato Valdés Olmos on Vimeo.

Usually team collaboration tools are separated into distinct categories. You have tools for presentations like GoToMeeting, WebEx, or BudgetConferencing; you have whiteboarding applications like Twiddla's team brainstorming solution and sometimes you have combo solutions like Adobe's Connect Now which lets you whiteboard and web conference at the same time. Or there's Vyew which lets you whiteboard and screen share. Then you have your project or task management tool set which can be anything from Basecamp to Clever Tools to Google Docs or it can even be an enterprise 2.0 app like the newly launched Qtask. Finally, if you just want to share screens live, you have to turn to solutions like Yugma (review), Yuuguu (review), or DimDim.(This isn't an extensive list by any means, FYI).

There aren't many apps that combine all these functions into one. OpenACircle, however, makes a good effort at doing so. The only feature they're lacking is a dedicated whiteboarding tool, but considering the support for everything else from file sharing to screen sharing, it's not worth dismissing the app solely due to that one missing feature. Besides, they're looking into adding that in a later release, if there is enough demand.

OpenACircle Dashboard

OpenACircle's Feature Set

What OpenACircle does provide is an extensive feature set that works well for distributed teams that still need to meet up regularly and share what they're working on with each other. To accomplish this, the app provides the following features, as detailed below.

Collaborate

The core feature to OpenACircle is the concept of the circles themselves. Essentially, a circle is a virtual team collaboration space where everyone can share information and work with each other in an environment focused on one particular area of a task or project.

If you have documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, PowerPoints, or any other type of file, you can upload it to the circle. You can import contacts from your email program and you can invite other members to join the circle. From within the circle, you can quickly launch the other conferencing aspects of the program like web conferencing which is done using web cams or screen-sharing. Every action taken within a circle is meant to be fast and easy, often only one or two clicks away. In a circle, no one person is tasked with being the admin or organizer - everyone can upload files, start chats, or host a meeting.

A Live Room

Presentations and Web Conferencing

Whether you need to share your desktop for a presentation or just have an online meeting with other team members, you can accomplish this from OpenACircle. Anyone can schedule the meeting and invite members to attend. Although a dozen members can participate in a live audio or video conference at one time, OpenACircle limits you to viewing three web cams and one desktop at a time. They claim this to be an intentional design choice because "people talk in same clusters," but the reality is that the system might not be able to support a dozen live cam streams at once. That's not really a big deal for smaller teams, but those teams with more members might wish to see all the faces of the meeting attendees.

Meeting Participants

For anyone who missed the meeting, the recordings are made available for later viewing. What's interesting is that multiple recordings from each member's viewpoint are archived. This means that you could have Bob, who was watching Sue's desktop, saved in one stream and John, who was watching Bob's desktop, saved in another. That's a feature you don't see elsewhere.

Chats

While attending a meeting, you have the opportunity to chat with other members through an integrated text chatting feature. You can even privately chat ("whisper") to each other. Those public chats are later archived within the circle. They could be used for side discussions or even as real-time meeting minutes.

Conclusion

OpenACircle represents an innovative all-in-one solution for small teams. They could be teams in a traditional enterprise or SMB environment who are just looking for a better way to work together or they could also be distributed teams for whom geography is a challenge. Mobile professionals will like it too, as it allows them to attend meetings and have the benefit of team collaboration even when they're on the road alone.

Users today receive 25 circles with as many as 50 people in each circle with unlimited storage. OpenACircle.com will begin charging in January. Anyone who signs up now will receive 90 days free even if they exceed what is currently being provided for free. Pricing is $9.95 for a premium account that incorporates additional circles and additional storage. OpenACircle.com will always have a free version. A fully operable version will be free up to a certain memory limitation (1GB) and over that will be $9.95 per month per user.

You can now join the OpenACircle beta program from the company homepage.

UPDATE: In light of the comments below, it's worth noting that OpenACircle has initially launched Windows-only, but support for other platforms (like Mac) and browsers (including a mobile version) are coming in the future. More specifically, Firefox support is only 30-45 days out.

The SkyData application is designed specifically for smartphones, as its target demographic is the traveling business user, not the consumer. At the moment, the app works on Windows Mobile and Blackberry, but an iPhone version will be ready by year-end, they say. At DEMO, the app was shown on Windows Mobile, but they did give a quick peek at both the Blackberry app and iPhone version, too.

The idea with SkyData is that you now have one screen from which you can easily access all the data and info you need. But it's more than just ease-of-access that makes SkyData interesting - it also integrates with your phone, too. For example, you can add your LinkedIn contacts to your phone's contacts from the app's menu.

Social Network Integration

From the SkyData application, you can dive into your contacts, no matter where you have them stored. You can access email contacts like those you have in Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail, but you can also access social network contacts like those on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, or Jigsaw.

CRM Integration

At the moment, SkyData integrates with Salesforce.com, but NetSuite and SugarCRM will be coming soon. They will then be followed by Microsoft and Siebel. What's unique about SkyData is, again, the app/phone integration. As you view emails, calls, and text messages, you can access all the info stored in SkyData with only a couple of clicks from within those messages. That adds a new layer of contextual information to the day-to-day communications that you recieve on your mobile device.

Pricing

The SkyData Personal Edition is free to use and combines social networks, Facebook, and related news. The Business Edition offers the CRM integration for $9.95 per month. Both editions are in private beta.

Too Much?

The scenario envisioned for using SkyData involves a traveling business person, such as someone who does sales, preparing for a meeting with a client. From this one app, they can quickly get a refresher on all the relevant information they have access to about that person, the company, and the market in general. They can even find a nearby restaurant where they can wine and dine them later after the meeting has concluded.

However, with the vast number of services and networks supported, it's possible that instead of being a convenient one-stop-shop, it's mashup overload.

Would you want all your networks mashed into one and available on your smartphone? Or would that be too confusing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Many of today's web sites for seeking employment seem like they haven't been updated in years - many don't even offer RSS feeds! It's as if the whole shift to a more social web has completely passed them by. It's about time those static sites received a little competition...and now they have it. Compared to the others, PaidInterviews is more innovative, but, like most new sites, it will only be disruptive if they can build a large enough network of users.

What makes PaidInterviews different is that it's more of a social network than a job search web site. And before the LinkedIn comparisons start up, remember that this site is designed solely to connect potential employees with employers - a feature that's only one aspect of what LinkedIn offers. PaidInterviews is more focused on "careers" than "contacts."

Using PaidInterviews

On the site, users create profiles and fill them out with the expected info like education, work history, skill set, etc. But there are also Web 2.0 aspects to these profiles - things like profile photos and tags, for example. Also, one of the big differences is that on PaidInterviews, potential employees have the option to upload video resumes along with their other information. Several spots are provided where you have the option to upload any sort of videos you want. The site does offer some suggestions, though, based on traditional interview questions ("What are some of your strengths and weaknesses?", "Why should you be hired?" etc.)

Video resumes may be the next big thing for job seekers, but few sites have implemented them so far. (We looked at few of those sites earlier this year on the post "The Resume, Rebooted" available here).

Optimatch Technology

Another difference between PaidInterviews and the current crop of job sites is the way they match candidates to jobs. Instead of simple keyword-based matching (which leads to spammy invites from recruiters who just scour the database for a particular word), PaidInterviews uses a patented "Optimatch" technology. Like "eHarmony for jobs," optimatch works by having candidates fill out and rate various aspects about their ideal career (pay, lifestyle, benefits, commute, skills, etc.). On the other end, employers then see matches ranked by percentage of the best (highest %) matches to the worst (lowest %) .

Optimatch in Action

Business Model

Employers don't get to see a candidate's personal info unless they're ready to interview, at which point they need to make arrangements to pay. However, the business model for PaidInterviews is very different - commission fees aren't paid to recruiters, but to the candidates themselves - sort of a "sign on" bonus thanks to using the site.

Candidates name their asking fee which is then matched to an employer's bid fee and this fee is paid by the employers on top of the employee's salary. If a candidate and employer are a good match but the asking fee and bid don't match up, they can both negotiate to reach an agreed ask fee. PaidInterviews believes this will lead to higher-quality candidates - it may or may not, but it's an interesting experiment. Considering that the youngest crop of workers (Gen Y) sees their skill set as a commodity available to whichever employer makes it most worth their while, this creative model might just gain traction.

Watercooler

The other big feature of this site is an area called the "Watercooler," which is a place where you can ask and answer questions about what a particular company is like. Here you can talk about what you liked/didn't like about the company. Since your username will display here, you may not want to go with your traditional web handle when signing up for PaidInterviews. Let the site instead generate a user ID for you so you can anonymously share your real thoughts.

Conclusion

Will PaidInterviews take off? It's too soon tell, but they have a lot of great features that make it a more appealing career search web site than what we currently have available today. There is certainly a lack of social media-infused innovation in this market, so it's nice to see they are doing something unique.

No matter which department you're in, Web 2.0 technologies have had an impact. If you've been ignoring their prevalence and adoption, you're at risk of falling behind in your career and your business is at risk of losing ground to its competitors who are tuned into this trend.

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we deliver news about Web 2.0's impact on business in addition to news about web technologies in general. Depending on your area of interest, you can find a lot of great information on this subject in our archives. Or simply bookmark this post for easy reference.

Document Collaboration Suites

GroupSwim is an innovative company which has created an intelligent community building and collaboration SaaS solution. They aim to connect individuals and build knowledge utilizing social based methodologies. Read more.

DreamFactory's suite of Enterprise 2.0 applications consists of a Project Management module, a Time and Expense Module, a Document Manager, and a Team Calendar. Originally, the company was available on Amazon Web Services, but now DreamFactory's software will be available on Intuit's QuickBase platform, too. Read more.

Box.net offers collaboration functionality which allows any Box.net user can invite collaborators to any folder in their account. The collaboration feature is also fully compatible with all the OpenBox services, which extends online collaboration beyond just word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, similar to what Google Docs currently offers. Read more.

The term groupware refers to applications that facilitate real-time communication, coordination and collaboration amongst groups of people. A number of startups are working hard to develop the nascent groupware market, so in this post we identify some of those startups and provide an overview of where the market is heading...read more.

What's the Deal With Wikis?

Only a handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it! How could you take it seriously? These days, just as blogs are, wikis are on their way to winning a reputation as serious publishing platforms. Wikis are now serious business. Read more.

Atlassian Confluence, makers of one of the most popular enterprise wiki solutions, offers Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration in their release of the Confluence 2.9 software. With these new tools, users no longer have to know the technicalities of wiki markup or even how to use the included rich-text WYSIWYG editor in order to make changes to the wiki - they can simply open up a Microsoft Office document instead. Read more.

WetPaint, a popular hosted Wiki solution, provides person-to-person and private messaging between users of their Wiki network. This means that Wetpaint Wiki users can now send single or multi-person private messages, to connect and collaborate with others about their interests. This post introduces wikis and discusees who is using them and for what purpose.First, wikis are described and then the range of wiki products in the market right now is explored. Read more.

Leave it to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will notify users whenever they are on a page that is publicly editable, using a standard icon that sits in the same place the RSS autodiscovery icon appears. Clicking on the icon (img. on the left) will take you to that page's editing interface. Read more.

What's Office 2.0?

Web Office Defined: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. Read more.

The State of Office 2.0: Over the past 10 years, Corel, Sun, IBM and others have tried to compete with Microsoft in the office software business, but thus far none of them have been able to take a significant chunk of Microsoft's large market share, which generates revenues exceeding $15 billion each year. These companies have tried everything; including Sun open sourcing their StarOffice suite and releasing it as the free OpenOffice. Yet, even this very compelling move has not been able to make a serious dent in the market. Read more.

Microsoft announced their Office Live Workspace is publicly available for everyone to access. The site, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, lets you access your documents online and share your work with others. Some say that the service's launch is a direct response to Google's entry into the web office space with their Google Docs online service. If that's so, then the question now is: did Microsoft just trump Google Docs? Or does Google Docs still rule online office suites? Read more.

The Web Office was a market that underwent a lot of changes in 2007. Our definition of Web Office is: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. The 2007 year in review: Read more.

This is the perspective of a "skeptical, later early adopter"; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don't spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze. Read more.

EditGrid, the main product of HongKong-based company Team and Concepts (TnC) Ltd., is a leading Web 2.0 online spreadsheet service that focuses on online collaboration and interoperability. Read more.

eXpresso was named as one of PC World's 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year for 2007. PC World succinctly summed the product up: "[it] allows Excel users to share their spreadsheets, online or off." eXpresso is different from the web office contenders that you normally hear about on ReadWriteWeb for three reasons...Read more.

Zimbra is looking to expand its platform to the iPhone. Recently they announced Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 will allow iPhone users over-the-air two-way synchronization of e-mails, calendar, contacts, and photos between user mailboxes and mobile devices, and seamless "push" e-mail service for all Zimbra Collaboration Suite users. Read more.

News from the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco, 2008. Read more.

What's Happening in the Enterprise 2.0 Space?

A report released by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013. Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is Happening: If you're a business who has been ignoring the Web 2.0 trend and the spread of social media: look out, the tide is shifting and you're about to be left behind. The rise of social media didn't happen overnight, the power of the internet to unite people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for socializing on the web - all of these things and more have led to the rise of social media. And this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business - now and for many years to come.

The break-up of behemoth, vertically integrated enterprises commenced in the 1970's, got a boost from junk bond financing in the 1980's, and accelerated in the 1990's with globalization. Now, late in the 2000's, Social Media (aka Web 2.0) is adding another gear that will accelerate the fundamental restructuring of the enterprise. Read more.

Most enterprise software sucks. That is my considered opinion from 30 years in the software biz. Words that come to mind are: bloated, inflexible and user hostile. The good news is that it is getting better, a lot better. The driver for change is what I call the consumerization of enterprise software. These new software champions typically have some if not all of these 8 main attributes...Read more.

The Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad program is a program that allows companies to showcase their products and compete for the opportunity to present their ideas to the community at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference. This competition, organized by Stowe Boyd, began in April when companies were invited to post their video pitches to the E2 web site. After the community voted, the list of contenders was narrowed down to five finalists who will now compete for the final spot. For that grand prize winner, the prize is free exhibit space at the upcoming conference. Read more.

SharePoint to run Enterprise 2.0? 9 companies are saying "yes," having recently launched Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology. If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception. Read more.

Is 2.0 Affecting My Industry?

Yes! Check out the examples below of Web 2.0's impact on various industries and fields.

Finance/Banking

Google is announced that after more than a year of work on the problem, Google Finance is now offering real-time price quotes for any stock traded on NASDAQ. Read more.

Strands, the recommendation and lifestreaming service we've written about here before, announced a much anticipated deal that will put it in the driver's seat for financial recommendations served up to millions of online banking customers around the world. The company's recommendation test-case in music is no longer all they will be known for around the world. Read more.

We reported on a survey that revealed that 48% of online banking customers between the ages of 18 and 34 would be interested in using "secure gadgets for personal banking" if their bank offered them. More than a quarter of bank customers would consider switching to another bank if it took better advantage of web 2.0 technologies. While that survey was flawed in some ways, there is another access point to banking information that customer may want more than secure widgets: mobile. Read more.

48% of Bank Customers Want Web 2.0 Gadgets. WorkLight, a startup that offers enterprise 2.0 products, recently did a survey among Facebook users to find out their willingness to use Web 2.0 tools for secure banking. The survey was conducted among 1000 Facebook users between the ages of 18-34. The fact that the survey was conducted among Facebook users gives it a bias towards tech-savvy people. However there are some surprising findings. Read more.

Accounting

Online Accounting: State of the Market: Accounting software for small business and personal use is increasingly moving from the desktop to online. However, compared to other office software, this transition to online has been relatively slow. Partly that's due to user reticence: writing a document online and sharing it with others (via Google Docs, Office Live, Zoho, or whatever you use) is one thing. Entering sensitive financial information into your browser is harder to adjust to. Read more.

Project Management

Add this one to your web office toolkit - LiquidPlanner is an online, hosted project management tool that lets you access and update projects anywhere you have an internet connection. The service offers you and your team a complete project environment, social networking and collaboration features, and a probabilistic scheduling engine which tells you the probability of completing each task - and ultimately the entire project - by a certain date. With everything organized into a centralized dashboard that can be customized for each team member, everyone on your team can stay focused on their tasks and how they relate to the project as a whole. Read more.

The Clarizen project management software came out of stealth mode last year and has now just launched a new version with additional features. The latest version, Clarizen v 2.0, will be demoed at the "Under the Radar Conference," an event held on Microsoft's campus whose current theme is "The Business of Web Apps: Where the Web Goes to Work." Read more.

Enterprise 2.0 is a rapidly growing trend that takes the concepts and tools of social media (social networking, RSS, wikis, blogs, etc.) and re-purposes them for business use, wrapping them up into applications that make the tools at work seem more like the tools we use in our day-to-day lives. While these enterprise 2.0 apps give us that web 2.0 feel, it's rarer to see actual Web 2.0 services like Facebook or Twitter used by businesses. And although we've seen many people promoting the business use of Twitter, we had not yet heard about anyone actually going so far as to integrate Twitter into a non-consumer focused application. However, that's just what Joint Contact has done. Their PM tool now shows how tweeting can actually be a productive activity. Read more.

37Signals offers a range of applications, from simple, single-function apps like Ta-Da Lists (to-do lists), Writeboard (collaborative word processor), and Campfire (group chat) to more complicated apps like Basecamp (project management) and Highrise (group contact manager). Read more.

Health

Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice. Read more.

The Health 2.0 Conference is reviewed here and some of the health web apps that caught our eye as well as trends that are discussed. Read more.

Google announced the public availability of Google Health, after initially launching as a closed beta back in February. It is described as "a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage [your] medical records and health information online" and is being positioned as a way for users to control their own medical records. Read more.

HR

Traditional resumes are boring. They become stale and out-of-date, they can't really showcase your work or achievements, and they end up just sitting in the bottom of someone's inbox. A paper resume, while professional, doesn't really let an employer get to know you. Many sites are trying to solve the problems of traditional resumes by providing job seekers a new way to stand out in the crowd. Read more.

The iPhone has been making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of its business users, too. Read more.

LinkedIn has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer ($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending Oct. '07) and the chart from Nielsen which shows comparative Facebook growth at 125%. Note that Facebook growth is from a higher base and the law of large numbers applies, but Facebook has always crowed about their growth rates vs the larger MySpace, so they have to live with growth rate comparisons to LinkedIn now. Read more.

Marketing

Viral marketing, user-generated content, online buzz: over the past few years, these terms have been representative of a new way of marketing to consumers that takes advantage of the current popularity of the social web. This new technique involves companies encouraging its customers to create content of their own in order to generate interest in the company's brand. Unfortunately, one of the potential side effects of this strategy is the potential for negative buzz. Despite this fact, a surprisingly low percentage of marketers are monitoring for negative responses. Read more.

Using the new pilot program from a company called Involver, Kiva launched a video campaign on Facebook to draw users to their site to lend directly to these developing nations. The video even features a button that appears at the end of the video encouraging you to "lend" money. Read more.

Mobile marketing startup, TextBound, has big plans to make text messages the new mass media for advertisers. Like we mentioned earlier, more and more companies are going to be betting on location based mobile ads this year, and TextBound hopes to capitalize on this trend. But unlike mobile social network/marketing vehicle, Fluc, TextBound isn't about connecting with your friends, it's about delivering ads to your cell phone via text message, then taking you to the mobile web for more details. Read more.

Recently, HiveLive announced a new partnership with Responsys, a marketing firm whose client list includes some big-name brands like Apple and Salesforce.com. Enterprise 2.0 is sure to follow. What Responsys offers their customers are on-demand email and marketing solutions that can be anything from web sites to email to mobile. With the new partnership with HiveLive, they can expand that offering to include enterprise social networks. Read more.

Widget platform Clearspring has an ad network that will allow widget publishers to monetize their widgets with advertising. The ads run inside widgets and come in a variety of formats. Clearspring has already inked deals with some of their largest widget publishers to run ads, including the NHL, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate Films, Blockbuster, and Virgin Mobile. Read more.

During this transition, it's not "old with the old and in with the new" - several technologies from the prior period of innovation are still important. These include the following:

• Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) - middleware that enables new component apps
• Business Process Management (BPM) - user-driven automation of manual tasks
• Mobile - beyond laptops to cell phones and PDAs
• X Internet - RFID and sensors at the edge the net connects physical objects to the internet

New Trends CIO Should Care About

Keeping in mind that the above trends are not going away anytime soon, CIOs still need to be aware of the upcoming trends that will define the future of enterprise IT. In the "IT everywhere" wave, business technology (BT) is the driving factor. The control of this technology is being shifted away from IT and is increasingly under the control of the business organizations and the users themselves. Simply put, BT is the future of IT. When looking ahead to the future, Forrester recommends CIOs keep the following trends in focus:

1. Technology Populism: Web 2.0 and social networking in the enterprise. Workers are provisioning their own tools, especially when IT can't provide. IT had best look towards integrating Enterprise 2.0 into their organization - if they don't, the end users will simply go find their own apps to use. The risks of ignoring this trend include compromised security, comprised privacy, and poor control of intellectual property. (We discussed this concept in more detail here).
2. The Information Workplace: The information workplace is a term describing a next-gen platform that consists of numerous parts such as unified communications, portals, enterprise content management apps, office productivity apps, collaborative technologies, business intelligence, data warehousing, and more. However, the information workplace isn't about each of these technologies individually, but how they all seamlessly come together as a whole. Today's information workplace is role-based, individualized, and thanks to the Web 2.0 invasion, it's also often "social" and "quick," as Web 2.0 tools tend to be.
3. Dynamic Business Applications: These are component apps that target certain roles but change easily. Over the next five years, IT's goal is to develop enterprise software that adapts to the business and that's capable of evolving as the business grows. These apps are designed with a focus on the people who use them, but are also highly adaptable as the business changes over time.
4. Digital Business Architecture: This includes SOA, unified communications, and virtual computing among other things as a top-level conceptual model for planning the future of both technology and architecture. A digital business architecture means the design of your business is accurately reflected in your technology.
5. IT Ecosystems: By 2012, there will be a shift in the dominant form of IT delivery from buyers self-integrating technology to having outside providers assemble and manage it. Those with the strongest delivery capabilities will lead the way. This trend will also include a shift away from software investments based on ownership to those based on subscription as well as an increase in new IP sourced from open communities.
6. Enterprise Master Data Management: MDM focuses on delivering trusted data throughout the enterprise. Today the focus is on addressing cross-application data use and management while also considering MDM's multiyear and multiphase business capabilities. In 2008, information and knowledge management professional will work on overcoming the organizational, process, and business case challenges to bringing this data to the enterprise.

Many people have made cases for Twitter as a tool for business. Here at ReadWriteWeb for example, we told you how Twitter can be used for journalism. We've posted about how companies were using Twitter for customer service and how PR professionals could use it for pitching purposes. The Twitter Fan Wiki is also keeping track of other Twitter usage cases that go beyond simply having conversations.

Despite this growing perception that Twitter can be actually be useful, we haven't seen business applications that make Twitter an essential part of their program...until now.

Project Management Via Twitter

The online project management system Joint Contact has just been updated to allow its members to Twitter their project statuses and other project-related messages - a task normally relegated to email. But email isn't always the right tool for the job - Twittering is faster, simpler, and thanks the the 140-character limit, the messages stay short and to the point. Twitter is also available on a number of devices from computers to PDAs, but unlike email, Twitter also works over SMS, so even those team members without a data plan on their phone can receive Twitter messages about the project when they're away from their computer.

In the Joint Contact online software, project members can post entries from discussion groups directly into Twitter - the subject line of a discussion group doubles as a tweet. Members can also update their work status via Twitter, too.

Twitter in Joint Contact

As far as the actual software itself, Joint Contact looks pretty standard. It allows you to manage tasks, documents, images, contact lists, online discussions, and team announcements in a way that's similar to how Basecamp works.

Twitter Replaces Email

What's most interesting about this recent update to Joint Contact is that it's a great example of how email can be replaced by social media tools. We know that the younger generation communicates via social media - most often on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook - often only using email to communicate with the "old people." We also discussed whether or not email was in danger not too long ago, and received a slew of comments debating this hot topic.

Whether or not you believe that email is danger, you have to admit, email is broken - our inboxes are so overloaded that a non-profit organization IORG has been recently been formed to research solutions to this problem. Well, here's one idea - replace email with other services (like Twitter) when possible to lighten the load on the inbox. For this innovative concept alone, we wish Joint Contact success.

Jigsaw came in for criticism when it first came along around 2006. But most services are raw when they debut, what matters is a) is the fundamental concept sound and b) can the management team continuously improve.

Jigsaw has top tier VC financing, so they can go the distance.

I chose Jigsaw to try because LinkedIn did not give me what I needed. I was searching for senior level contacts at a large company. LinkedIn gave me plenty of Level 3 contacts but I have learned from experience that Level 3 (somebody I know knows somebody who knows the contact) is not useful and can be a real time sink. So I only bother when I see a Level 2 contact.

I could pay LinkedIn to send an InMail to these contacts, but that is no better than sending a cold-mail and why spend money when there are free alternatives?

So my next stop was to Google the names. I saw Jigsaw coming up a few times so decided to give it a try. Fairly quickly I was able to get - at no cost - the contact details I needed. That is not as good as an intro but cold calling/mailing in limited doses can still do the trick.

There were some niggling irritations as with many relatively new services, but I did get value and the basic concept seems like it could be viable. Jigsaw works on a "pay or play" principle. You can just pay to get access to the contact information, as with any list. Unlike traditional lists, you can buy just one name. So this works well for selling high value stuff to senior people, not good for mass market spamming. Play means earning points by contributing contact information back into the system. They seem to have evolved good systems for managing this to avoid gaming and bad data.

So the data is user generated, as it is with LinkedIn, as opposed to scraped data from services such as ZoomInfo. Scraped data has value as well - you get the contacts that don't put themselves into LinkedIn.

However, data created by other people is not usually as good as data created by the person in question. I noted too many errors in my short stay on Jigsaw. I earned some points by correcting them, but this also made me question of the value of the data I had extracted.

I see some value in Jigsaw, if they can keep improving. I don't know how viable Jigsaw is as a business. It strikes me as an inexpensive service to run, so reaching profitability may not be too hard. But I don't know whether this can be a really valuable business in its current form. It is too easy to get email addresses in other ways (Googling the name and just using the corporate email standard) and you can always call via the company receptionist.

What has been your experience with Jigsaw? Have you worked with other alternative services?

If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception.

One of the Microsoft Server products that businesses worldwide run is SharePoint. For those not from the I.T. community, SharePoint is thought of as a more robust version of Google Sites, but that's a poor comparison. Yes, both tools allow for team site creation and collaboration, however the similarities start and stop there.

For many companies, SharePoint is the portal for all their business data - and not just docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs, but also browser-based forms that interact with built-in workflow technologies which add business logic to sophisticated online applications.

Other tools allow for the addition of business intelligence enabled dashboards and reporting centers, enterprise search, and application templates that can be downloaded and customized to quickly set up internal web sites and services that provide everything from online help desks, to groupboard workspaces, to knowledge libraries, vacation scheduling tools, project tracking workspaces, sales pipelines, and much more.

In other words, businesses won't necessarily be ditching SharePoint anytime soon just to run the latest and greatest "Enterprise 2.0" technologies. However, that doesn't mean they're not interested in running Enterprise 2.0 apps - it just means that they'll be more likely to "maximize their investment" in SharePoint in order to do so.

This week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, several vendors are demonstrating their social-computing business tools, and a good many of them are tools that integrate with SharePoint technologies. Here's a look at who these companies are and what they offer:

Awareness Inc.

Just yesterday, Awareness announced their new platform that allows for the creation of Web 2.0 communities that connect people and content through social networking technologies and Awareness-powered widgets that can be ported to any third-party services from Facebook to MySpace.

With the new platform from Awareness, Microsoft SharePoint integration is built-in, letting I.T. admins use SharePoint's scalable and searchable back end to tie together internally-facing SharePoint environments with externally-facing social networking/Web 2.0 communities.

This integration also includes the packaging of Awareness's Web 2.0 widgets as SharePoint Web Parts that let users monitor and contribute content, display user details and status, search content, and view metrics. Awareness also integrates with SharePoint's Identity Management to allow for SSO (single sign-on), which makes using both platforms together a seamless experience.

NewsGator Technologies

Yesterday, NewsGator announced the launch of their new SharePoint add-on, Social Sites 2.0. This tool brings new social capabilities to SharePoint Server 2007 including community pages, which are ad hoc communities formed around projects, interests, or locations, and social networking capabilities that let employees better collaborate and share knowledge. Social Sites also includes tools for tagging, search, customized recommendations, and a discussion component that includes email integration. Users are provided with social graphs based on both explicit and implied connections, making it easier for them to find their colleagues and content in an easier way than before.

Atlassian

Atlassian, makers of Confluence, an enterprise wiki creation tool, announced its integration with SharePoint through an embedding function that lets the Confluence wiki appear to be a part of the SharePoint site, complete with an edit button for making changes. The wiki lets users add charts, diagrams, image galleries, maps and database content within their pages.

WorkLight Inc.

Yesterday, WorkLight announced its new WorkLight for SharePoint, which lets SharePoint Server users securely view and update information from SharePoint Server through familiar consumer tools like Windows Vista gadgets, Facebook applications, personalized homepage gadgets, RSS, mobile devices, and more.

blueKiwi Software

Last month, blueKiwi Software announced their integration with both Microsoft Office and SharePoint. With their new SharePoint connector and blueKiwi OfficeAssistant, their social software suite easily integrates with a company's SharePoint Server to provide social networking tools and capabilities that include blogging, user profiles, conversation trackers, tagging, social search, and more.

Connectbeam

Yesterday, Connectbeam announced their new Spotlight Connect for SharePoint, a bookmarking and tagging add-on module for their enterprise social search-and-discovery application that brings social content, collaboration, and bookmarking tools into SharePoint via a special add-on module available this July.

Telligent Systems

Telligent's Community Server Evolution platform uses its REST API, mail gateway, shared authentication and single sign-on, to integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Active Directory. Their social-computing platform offers enterprise blogging tools, social networking, social streams, forums, media galleries, and business analytics through detailed reporting.

Leverage Software

Leverage Software announced integration with SharePoint Server, enabling users to interact with external-facing internet communities of their partners, customers, or corporate alumni, while maintaining the security needs of an enterprise.

Tomoye Corp.

Tomoye's Ecco software, which lets you get answers, network, and collaborate across the enterprise, is now offering a SharePoint-ready solution. This capability lets users publish documents from SharePoint to Ecco and supports SSO between applications.

In case you haven't heard yet - the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as "Web 2.0" and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it's no small shift. They're even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business world - it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.

This next big shift is on the horizon, but you can see it coming. Today, there still may be plenty of businesses employing "classic geeks" in their I.T. Department, but that's about to change. Don't misunderstand - the world will always need a good engineer, but the I.T. leaders of tomorrow - the ones guiding the business in the use of their computer resources, the ones working with the CEOs to execute the vision and direction via information technology - they will no longer be what we think of as the classic "computer geek." You know the type - the stereotypical introvert, who's more comfortable behind the glow of computer screen than interacting with the rest of the human race. The one who likes to speak in acronyms that only he or she understands. The ones who know how to do everything from a command prompt. These folks will be a dying breed...at least around the office.

Instead, tomorrow's computer "geek" will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong. So what does the "new geek" need to know to run tomorrow's I.T. Department? An entirely new skill set, as it turns out. Here's a short list, but feel free to add to it in the comments:

Enterprise 2.0

No, the CEO isn't going to walk up to you and say "Hey, I've been thinking we should deploy some Enterprise 2.0 software 'round here" - those guys never use the same words we do and that isn't about to change. A good I.T. person, though, knows how to interpret "user-speak" and present them with the tools they need even if they didn't know how to ask for them in our language. If anything, they're going to be more likely to say something like: "Sending out an email newsletter seems outdated - I wish there was a better way to communicate with our customers," or "I wish there was an easier way to keep up with the industry news," or "Wow, how many different versions of this documentation is saved on our intranet, anyway?" The old I.T. guy might mumble and turn their head, but the I.T. 2.0 guy knows to say "Blog! RSS! Wikis!" instead.

Still, it's not going to be as simple as just knowing the terminology. Now it's up to you to recommend the platform - will you be maximizing the investment you have in SharePoint, which already includes many Web 2.0 tools, or do you need a more customized solution? If so, whose? Those are the questions the new I.T. guy will need to answer - and yes, they will still need technical skills to do so, but there's a big difference between knowing those answers and knowing how to properly adjust the MTU size in Windows XP.

Cloud Services

I.T. 2.0 means computing moves to the cloud. Where today's businesses are running their servers in-house and behind the firewall, tomorrow's servers will be hosted by someone else. Microsoft, for example, will be offering hosted services for many of their server products from Exchange to BizTalk, SQL to SharePoint, and more. The Microsoft Online Services beta is underway and Bill Gates is talking about a future where millions of servers will live in their data centers.

And that's just one option. Google's coming after the business world, too. At first, it was just a simple offering of an easy-to-use but rapidly evolving web office suite that could be easily deployed with minimal expense, but then they added Google Apps for your domain, complete with admin dashboards and security settings, Google Sites for team collaboration, and Google Web Security for Enterprise. Clearly, they're well aware that there's a niche they can fill with a set of web tools that take advantage of this new always-on computing world.

Microsoft and Google are big names, but it's just scratching the surface of cloud computing. You also have Amazon's Web Services numerous SaaS offerings, and more. The I.T. 2.0 guy will need to know not just what software is best for the company, but whether or not it should run behind the firewall, in the cloud, or a combination of both.

The Mobile Workforce

The new workforce won't be tied down. With near-ubiquitous broadband and a growing employee roster of Gen Y workers, being mobile will be the norm, not the exception. The mobility that used to be reserved for only the well-traveled sales force, will now be available to almost everyone. Most office workers, except for the very bottom-rungs of time-clock punchers will be issued laptops, not desktops - the blessing and the curse of the mobile worker. Work-from-home won't be considered a perk, but a necessity.

The I.T. department, though, will have to adapt their current solutions to fit this new workforce - one that's not always connected to the company network, but surfing unprotected Wi-Fi from their local coffee shop or their own home wireless network. I.T. will need to find ways to push through the security updates and patches their users need, even if they're never remoting in to the company network. I.T. also needs to be more wary of lost and stolen company laptops filled with company data. Many companies are already turning to virtualization to solve this problem. Users will only have the illusion of a personalized desktop - their data will really live on servers instead. Welcome back to thin client computing.

A Self-Provisioning User Base

This new trend, dubbed "Tech Populism" by Forrester Research, is referring to the new user base of digitally savvy workers. As the boomers retire and Gen Y starts to fill in the ranks, I.T. will be dealing with a technologically-smart crowd of young workers who aren't afraid to find their own tools for the job. Intranet site too kludgy? They'll build their own on Google Sites, Microsoft Live Workspace, Basecamp, or any of a number of other similar team collaboration platforms available. File too big for email? They'll upload it to Box.net, Google Docs, Zoho, SkyDrive, or whatever other preferred file-sharing/storage service they're used to using. I.T. guys turning a blind eye to this practice will soon have their necks on the line when it's revealed that confidential data is in the cloud protected only behind the salesperson's password of "FIDO."

So, what's an I.T. guy to do? They can't lock down the whole internet, no matter how hard they try. Instead, I.T. is going to have to know the business - really know the business - and anticipate the needs the company's employees are going to have. Then, the challenge will be to research, locate, and deploy solutions that provide the ease-of-use the employees want, but also the security measures I.T. needs.

Conclusion

With all these changes, the new I.T. person will be very different than they are today. Those that have the skills of an engineer and the knowledge needed to run I.T. 2.0 are going to be superstars, but they also might be rare. Engineers used to the day-to-day technicalities of running a company network won't necessarily find themselves out of job - it's just that their workplace will change. They'll be moving out to the data centers where they'll work to keep the cloud up-and-running. Meanwhile, back at the office, the socially savvy, I.T. "facilitator" of Enterprise 2.0 will be running the show.

Here's a brief look at the current contenders:

Aegeon

Aegeon entered their social collaboration suite, Spaceo.us, in the competition. The software, which would be deployed in a company's own data center, delivers Web 2.0 content via areas called "spaces." These spaces can be people spaces, product spaces, organization spaces, topic spaces, or a company can create space types of their own which suit their organization's needs. Within these spaces content can be mashed up - anything from Excel spreadsheets to Google Maps to SAP iDocs. These spaces can then be tagged, rated, or commented on, just as any Web 2.0 user-generated content could be.

GroupSwim

GroupSwim is a SaaS Collaboration solution that uses proprietary semantic technology to automatically tag and rate content including discussions, emails, documents, wikis, and more. The technology also identifies experts by topic and searches for relationships among the data. Although that description might sound a little dry to the average user, it's no matter because GroupSwim is actually fun for them to use. By combining more subtle implicit attributes with more explicit meta-data generated via Thumbs-Up voting buttons on content and Watch Lists for monitoring favorite topics, GroupSwim is just plain useful - even if you don't understand how the backend works.

NewsGator

From Newsgator, the maker of popular desktop and online RSS readers, comes Social Sites 2.0. Via an AJAX interface, Social Sites uses a series of scripts and SharePoint Web Parts to make SharePoint a new social hub for business. The software leverages a company's previous investment in Microsoft's SharePoint technologies, turning SharePoint's My Site and Team Sites pages into more of a Facebook-esque enterprise solution. The original version of Social Sites was introduced last year, but version 2.0 lets people connect over common projects, areas of expertise, activities and interests, as well as offering a visual social graph.

Project SocialSite

Project SocialSite is a tool that will deliver social networking functionality to any community web site. The functionality will be based on the OpenSocial standands to bring their platform to applications written in Java, PHP, or Ruby. SocialSite is designed for web oriented applications with a set of REST APIs and widgets, OAuth and OpenID for authentication, and single sign-on.

Veodia

Veodia offers business users a broadcasting service which makes it easy and affordable for businesses and other institutions to create and distribute high-quality video while also keeping control and ownership of their content. The solution can be easily deployed, with no need for any I.T. involvement to do so.

Introducing Social Media To Businesses

If this were a course, JustMeans would be the teacher of social media for businesses. JustMeans provides a way for businesses to use various tools associated with social media from blogging to podcasting with ease. To make businesses feel comfortable in early adopter territory, traditional medias such as press releases are also provided. With these tools, users, or "stakeholders", can easily engage with businesses on JustMeans via the company's profile.

Social Responsibility

JustMeans rides the economic "green wave" of corporate social responsibility. This is also one of the key focuses of the JustMeans site and the businesses that engage with it. Businesses can post about the "social responsibilities" that they are upholding to keep users and fans of a businesses network up-to-date on their goals and outreach programs. The site includes a forum for businesses and consumers to collectively brainstorm about ideas for change. This way, users are actually heard, while companies can receive better feedback about what they can do better.

Connecting For A Collective Change

JustMeans is a great platform for connecting businesses that are socially responsible with users that appreciate being informed not only about a company's ethics, but what a company is doing to insure that they are upholding the standards they've set and obligations they've committed to from a social standpoint. JustMeans is not only a network to help introduce businesses to social media, but a platform for collective social change.