With Xobni Enterprise, I.T. admins can manage the deployment and permissions surrounding the plugin's use via a web-based portal that provides access to user's profiles as well as a groups management feature. By placing different subsets of users into groups, I.T. can deploy custom versions of the plugin to different users. For example, everyone company-wide may get a plugin that offers LDAP integration, but only sales professionals would receive the version that connects to Salesforce. Admins can also choose to "switch off" other previously default integrations such as the Facebook and Twitter extensions.

To push the plugin out to end users, Xobni Enterprise offers an MSI file and registry settings that can be modified as necessary.

Extensions for Salesforce, SharePoint, and More

At launch time, Xobni's Solution Provider Program has partnered with a number of Enterprise vendors to provide extensions and integrations for their new system. The current list of partners includes Atlius Consulting, Cogent, Echo Lane and Interdyne BMI, which help Xobni integrate SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce CRM platforms among others.

The new service also comes with an Extensions Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows in-house developers to write their own extensions to integrate other platforms beyond those which are currently available. Xobni suggests this SDK could be used to deliver company news and information from an internal corporate portal, specific business application, or any other web service.

Other Features

Another general enhancement available with this version of the plugin is Xobni's expanded search capabilities that allows users to search calendar appointments, tasks and archived PST files. The search feature includes advanced filters which let users find results by limiting searches to email contents only or the To:, From:, and  or Subject: fields of their email messages. Users can also access their entire contact database from the auto-complete field in Outlook's "Compose" window.

Pricing

The company webpage for Xobni Enterprise does not include any pricing information, only a link to "Request More Info" from the company. This is likely because each Xobni system is being somewhat custom-built in terms of price because there are additional costs to run the pre-defined extensions created by the company. Depending on which extensions a company chooses to deploy and however many users will be using them, the overall cost of the Xobni Enterprise system will vary. However, the company informs us that the system starts at $30 per user per year with volume discounts available.

Xobni has seen over 3 million downloads of their plugin, including both free and paid versions, since their initial debut. This new offering represents the second revenue stream for the company, the first being the launch of Xobni Plus, a premium version of the plugin that sells for $29.95. They also claim to have a presence in 80% of Fortune 500 companies thanks to employee adoption outside of the traditional I.T. infrastructure, a trend known as self-provisioning and one that has steadily increased over the years.

Companies looking to maintain control over what their employees can do on their company computers often end up having no choice but to purchase the enterprise services provided by the startups their employees are already using in order to once again centralize control within I.T. If Xobni's adoption across the enterprise is as strong as they claim, they may soon have several companies looking to implement the Xobni Enterprise Service so they can do just this. Other companies may be tempted to try the product for the first time now that it offers I.T. friendly tools and enterprise level support.

More information about Xobni Enterprise is available here on the company's website.

The research study was commissioned by Gomez, Inc., a company that helps organizations optimize the performance of their web and mobile applications. Obviously, that means you have to take these findings with a grain of salt as the company clearly has a vested interest in making the mobile web sound worse off than actually is.

That being said, in reading through the findings, you'll probably find yourself agreeing with much of what's being said. For example, the study found that the majority of mobile phone users said they expected sites to load as quickly, nearly as quickly, or even faster on their mobile phones as compared to their PC. While intellectually, most of us know that's not going to be the case - broadband connections at home or work are generally much faster than accessing the web via a mobile handset - there's still a feeling of wanting the phone to perform the way we've become accustomed to...that is to say, FAST. Waiting for a non-mobilized site to load up in the phone's browser reminds us too much of the painful days of dial-up connections. It feels like we've regressed to an earlier time...like there's something wrong with the site.

When encountering these slow loading sites, half of consumers reported that they were only willing to wait 6-10 seconds or less for the site to load. Longer than that, and they'll give up, move on, and probably won't ever return. Sixty-one percent said it's unlikely that they would ever visit that site again from their mobile device while another forty percent said they would seek out a competitor's site that provided a similar service.

While slow speeds were the number one complaint, with 73% reporting having issues in the past year, other complaints pointed to a lack of well-designed and stable mobile-ready sites. 51% percent complained of sites that crashed, froze, or received an error and another 48% reported the formatting of the site made it difficult to read. Clearly, there is overlap in these numbers as the survey respondents reported multiple complaints. Overall, though, 60% of mobile users reported having one or more issues accessing a site from their mobile phones.

No Mobile Web Presence is Bad for Business

For businesses who maintain a web presence, the survey's findings highlight the potential consequences of ignoring the mobile web. There are more people surfing mobile sites than ever before - 56.9 million as of July, according to Nielsen. Companies who haven't given consideration to their mobile websites aren't just losing customers for that initial attempted transaction that goes bad - they're possibly losing those customers for good seeing as how many of those frustrated users claim they won't ever return to the site in question.   

Although the survey sample size was relatively small (just 1001 total respondents) and the company behind this wants to sell web optimization services, the findings seem to be believable. Anyone who's spent a good amount of time on the mobile web can assure you that it truly is in its infancy. So many sites are slow, aren't optimized for viewing from mobile handsets, and it is frustrating when you encounter them. Hopefully, businesses will begin to realize that if they want to compete with the next generation of web surfers, a "web presence" alone isn't enough. Today, you need a "mobile web presence" too.

Real-Time View of App Creation

With the next generation of the product, Sweb Apps 2.0, some of the original concerns about the - well, let's say it - rather boring user interface of the Sweb-built apps have begun to be addressed. Whereas before you could only customize the background color and upload your own buttons, today you can customize the background to be an image instead. And if you don't have one of your own, Sweb Apps provides an online library of images to choose from. That's a step in the right direction, even if some of the backgrounds are reminiscent of early GeoCities Web pages or Windows 98 wallpapers... after all, you have to crawl before you can run.

As you build your app's landing page, you're provided with a real-time view of your app in progress, which makes it much easier to tell whether your images, buttons and colors look good together or not. That's a handy feature for SMB owners, who may be creating their app on their own without the aid of a professional designer. The app builder also uses drag-and-drop functionality to make the process even more painless for the inexperienced end user.

Mobile Storefronts

However, one of the most interesting developments in the 2.0 version of Sweb Apps' online service is the new "store" functionality. Now, as easy as it is to build an app, you can essentially build a mobile storefront for your business. This feature, still in beta, allows you to categorize, sub-categorize, itemize and write descriptions for your products. You can manage and maintain your inventory through Sweb's CMS, and your mobile customers can "check out" via the included PayPal integration.

Sweb Apps tells us that they envision this sort of feature being used by restaurants, boutiques and small retailers. That's easy to imagine. For example: wish you had picked up a t-shirt from that seafood place where you dined on vacation? In theory, you could now, even if you were halfway home, thanks to these new mobile storefronts. In a way, the mobile stores are even better than having the same functionality via an online store on the "real" Web, mainly because not everyone brings their laptop around with them 24/7. But their iPhones? People don't leave home without them.

And More...

Other features being introduced today include podcasts, audio streams and YouTube integration, all of which streams audio or video within the app itself, as opposed to launching an external program such as the iPhone's own built-in YouTube app. Also new is the ability for users to manage multiple applications from one account.

Sweb Apps says they've seen good results since their August 2009 launch, with a 400% increase in sales, but won't share actual numbers. That doesn't really tell us much about the service's adoption by the SMB market. Since the company isn't touting any high-profile clients or case studies in their PR though, we have to imagine that they're flying a bit under the radar on the business front at this point. Still, it's very early in the game, and services like this can take a while to catch on and gain popularity.

The pricing for Sweb Apps remains the same despite the new features. The company offers four-, six- and eight-button packages, which all include a one-time set-up fee of $50 per button. Then there is a $25 monthly hosting fee applied to every application going forward.

According to Ek, the notion of overnight success is "very misleading and actually rather harmful to any hope for long term and sustainable growth in this industry." Despite this fact, he calls out the music industry for doing just that and expecting to see business models proven "within months of inception."  That's just not how it works, he says, reminding us how iTunes was not initially the powerhouse it is today. In its first year, the company missed its revenue targets by 30% and most label executives doubted its staying power at the time.

While Ek realizes that comparing iTunes to Spotify is wrong given the very different business models for each company, it does prove the overall point: success in this industry takes time.

Spotify, which is currently hugely popular in Europe, has yet to launch in the U.S. due to contract negotiations over licensing agreements. However, as popular as the service is, it still has a long way to go in terms of both product and monetization. Ek acknowledges that one thing which needs to be addressed is how difficult it is for Spotify users to actually buy the music they're listening to. Yet despite the fact that nearly 80% of the company's users are unaware that they can purchase the tunes they're hearing, Spotify is still one of the biggest affiliates to music downloads.

Another challenge facing the company is how to earn a profit considering the large costs of licensing the music it plays... especially when reliant on an ad-supported model. (Spotify offers multiple service levels, one being ad-supported. It also offers subscriptions.) Earlier this year, another streaming service, Last.fm, had to do away with its ad-supported model for the same reason.

The Music Industry Needs to Change

If it was up to Spotify, the music industry would be embracing the future instead of constantly fighting against it. Ek says that in order for the industry to find success, it needs to realize that the new business model is "a mix between ad-supported music, downloads, subscriptions, merchandising and ticketing where the user comes first and where the key to monetization comes from portability and packaging access rights." If willing to adapt, the music industry could then have the potential to become a $40-50 billion industry and one that could grow stronger than it ever was.

Until that time, it looks like Spotify has a long road ahead of it, but it's good to know that it is up for the challenge. "We aren't interested in just trying to hype the company and then flipping it," Ek says. "We are in this for the long haul."

Should Google be worried? Some analysts think so. "This is trouble for Google," said Matthew Cain of Gartner. Google of course, disagrees.

Google, whose online suite of applications is collectively known as Google Apps, has been making steady inroads in the business world with offerings tailored to schools, nonprofits, SMBs, and the enterprise. The company currently touts 15 million Apps users in nearly 2 million companies worldwide. Marketed as a less expensive and easier-to-manage alternative to on-site systems like Microsoft Exchange, the suite has encouraged many companies to switch to their hosted solution, mainly due to ever-decreasing IT budgets which have left penny-pinching companies scrambling to find ways to cut costs.

However, pitting iNotes against Google Apps isn't exactly a fair "apples to apples" comparison. That's because iNotes' focus is just email, calendaring, and contact management. Google Apps, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive suite that includes Google Docs, an online office suite, an intranet-building tool called Google Sites, and much more. Also, iNotes only provides 1 GB of storage for their product - if you want extra, you'll have to pay. Google, however, starts you off with a 25 GB inbox.

Still, since Lotus is the lower-priced solution, that alone may be enough for them to compete. Google Apps currently charges $50 per user per year but iNotes will be only $36. Those cost savings combined with the brand recognition of the IBM name will help iNotes quickly get in the game.

IBM: iNotes Delivers More Than Cost Savings, it Offers Stability

In addition to IBM's primary focus on price, the company is also taking advantage of some very public recent Gmail outages, including one which locked out corporate customers from their email for 2 hours last month, to prop up their solution as the more stable alternative. According to Poulley, IBM has a long-standing record of running "the world's mission-critical systems for banks, telcos, and utilities...We're bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition."

Google Responds: iNotes is No Google Apps

Google isn't taking all this lying down, though. Dave Girouard, President of Google's Enterprise division, said that Google will learn the business of selling software more quickly than IBM will adapt to cloud computing.

Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesperson, also noted that IBM's positioning of their iNotes product seemed to be more of a complement to their on-site solutions than it was a replacement for them. With iNotes, it appears that IBM wants to supplement their current install base of Lotus Notes servers to deliver email to both deskless workers and those who didn't have email accounts already. Google Apps, on the other hand, is designed to be a complete "rip and replace" solution allowing businesses to do away with their on-site systems entirely in favor of a fully hosted cloud product.

He also pointed out that IBM's claims of reliability when it came to their iNotes product were unproven at this point. iNotes, which is based on IBM's acquisition of a Hong Kong company called Outblaze, does not appear to offer any service level agreements (SLAs)... at least it doesn't mention any on its website. IBM confirms that's the case, saying the company "has not made any specific promises regarding uptime" but that the company has a solid history of reliability. Still, without an SLA documented in black-and-white, companies, especially those in the enterprise space, are bound to be wary.

Finally, Kovacs spoke of the various ways in which Google products interoperate with other technologies used by large companies. The Google Apps system works with Microsoft Outlook, mobile phones including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. It even integrates with Blackberry Enterprise Server and directory systems like Microsoft's Active Directory.

In the end, though, Google says they're excited about the iNotes launch as it serves as "further validation that the future of computing is in the cloud." Having a well-respected and trusted organization like IBM offer something like this will bring more visibility to cloud computing and that is something that will be good for everyone.

Through short videos from some of the top industry minds including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lauder Professor at The Wharton School Jerry Wind and AAAA CEO Nancy Hill, the group hopes to challenge marketers to take risks and create better campaigns. For now, the site comes up short as the videos appear to answer questions in a very general manner with few specifics in terms of tactics and strategy. The most promising component of the site appears to be the "Free Tools" section with a list of resources including links to a website optimizer, search insights and 3rd party trends data from Facebook and Twitter. Nevertheless, as of this review, all of those links are dead. The first rule of marketing: test your product.

While this is a good site to get inspiration, social media marketers and PR pros who are looking for new strategies and specifics might be better off visiting Building43, PR 2.0 or asking questions through LinkedIn's online groups. Other great resources include the Social Media Club events and social marketing-related Meetups.

How to Build Your App

Since the service is designed for businesses, one of the first steps is to select your particular industry from the provided categories. At the moment, these include: Restaurant, Retail Store, Business, Non-Profit, Government, Education, Entertainment, and Customization, a category which lets you design your own personalized app if what you're creating doesn't fit into one of the other categories.

From within each of these sections, there are various buttons to choose from. For example, in the "Restaurant" category, you can add buttons like "menu," "reservations," "map," etc. There are even buttons for Facebook and Twitter which allow you to direct customers to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Sample layouts are provided, too. After picking your buttons, you create your Sweb Apps account and submit the information about your business. The fifth step is to customize the application with your business's personalized info. In the case of the restaurant app, for example, that would mean filling out the menu, listing your hours and address, and so on.

The final step is to submit payment. Prices vary depending on which package you choose. Packages with 4 buttons are $200, 6 buttons are $300, and 8 buttons are $400. In addition, Sweb Apps charges a $50 one-time setup fee and a $25/month hosting fee. For an extra $10/month, business owners can optionally choose to add on a simple analytics package called "App Tracker" which lets you track the number of downloads and button clicks. By tracking this sort of information, it's easy to tell which buttons are accessed most and which are being ignored, allowing you to re-design the app to better engage your customers.

Customizations

While the process of app building is extremely simple, and yes, we were able to create a basic app in a matter of minutes (we stopped short of paying for it of course!), the end result is a somewhat basic-looking application. But there are a couple of things you can do to spruce it up a little. For one, you're able to select your own background color, and this can even be a custom color of your choosing. Sweb Apps also lets you upload your own button images instead of using the defaults provided. This would definitely give your app a more unique and personalized look, so it's worth looking into. If you're not all that handy with Photoshop yourself, it would be a good idea to hire a designer or crowdsource the project through a site like 99Designs or CrowdSpring and have someone create custom buttons for you.

The Best Part: Real-Time Updates!

If anything ever changes and needs to be updated, you simply return to your Sweb Apps account and make the changes there. Instead of waiting on Apple to approve the update as is done with traditional iPhone applications, the updates to Sweb Apps go live in real-time thanks to the company's hosted Content Management System. With Sweb Apps, all the app's content is housed in the company's own database which is why it's able to be updated on-the-fly (and why there's a monthly hosting fee). The possibilities here are endless. This feature allows a business to promote one-time events, specials, coupons, sales, or anything else that would be offered on a limited time basis. This, in fact, may be the best feature of the app builder. Real-time communication with your customer base through the mobile is exactly what applications should provide, but when relying on Apple and their mysterious approval process, the delays involved often prevent this from happening.

Sweb Apps could function as a way for businesses to distribute mobile coupons, too. With buttons like "Photo Gallery" which can be renamed to anything you like (such as "Coupons" or "Specials"), businesses could update their apps with pre-designed mobile coupons, if they so wished.

Lots of Potential, Future Plans

Not that long ago, we wondered why there weren't more iPhone applications for businesses available in the App Store. It's possible that was because the tools to make building mobile apps easy were simply not good enough. With Sweb Apps, though, this could quickly change. Being able to build a mobile application with no technical know-how using a dead-simple onscreen guide is the sort of mobile service we're sure many businesses have been dreaming about. (At least we hope so! We would love to track the sales at a few of our favorite local stores via our iPhones.)

The company plans to introduce more features into their service in the future including premium buttons, Flash-based content (assuming Apple ever approves Flash on the iPhone), in-app advertising opportunities, and more. Next year, the company also plans to launch app builders for other mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre.

Yet today, there's new information being released that seems to say something different about the state of social networking applications in the workplace. According to Nucleus Research, Facebook causes a 1.5% decrease in employee productivity.

According to the Nucleus Research survey, employers are losing 1.5 workers per 100 in employee productivity to the supposed time-wasting activity known as "Facebooking." To reach that number, the company surveyed a random sampling of 237 office workers.

The findings revealed that nearly two-thirds of those who visit Facebook do so during business hours and they stay on the site for an average of minutes per day when they do.

Despite what you've heard touted about the necessity of Facebook in today's business world, those responding to this survey overwhelmingly admitted they didn't see any business reason for using the site. In total, 87% of respondents basically said their time on Facebook at work had no business-related purpose.

Of course, given the small sample size of this survey, it's hard to form any definitive conclusions...although that hasn't stopped Nucleus Research from doing so. They're suggesting that companies "evaluate their Facebook policies and the cost to the organization...as today blocking Facebook may actually result in a 1.5 percent gain in productivity."

A Second Opinion

We think that Nucleus Research isn't seeing the bigger picture here, so we'd like to counter their research with some findings from the University of Melbourne. U of M professor Dr. Brent Coker also surveyed a small sample of office workers (300 to be exact) and came to a rather different conclusion.

He found that people who took small breaks between tasks were 9% more productive than their colleagues who did not. "It gives them a chance to reset their concentration," says Coker. That means that companies who block access to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are actually inadvertently decreasing employee productivity.

Besides, we hate to break the news to Nucleus Research, but employees have always found ways to take these sorts of small mental breaks at work. Before social networks - heck, before computers, even - workers would typically gather around the water cooler for some mindless banter. Others take cigarette breaks, head to the vending machines, or stop by a co-worker's office for chit-chat as they make their way through the office. Employees don't need Facebook to goof off, you see.

But out of all the ways to take a break at work, Facebook really seems to be the least offensive - especially if the employee has built up a work-related network of friends and colleagues on the site. Who knows? They might even find themselves chatting about work while on Facebook!

At the end of the day, though, this isn't a simple black or white issue. Sometimes using Facebook may be productive for employees, sometimes it's not. Either way, the knee-jerk reaction from organizations shouldn't be to simply block access to the social network. Perhaps businesses should just focus on rewarding the employees who perform their jobs well and disciplining those who don't do their work? That seems like a more reasonable way to stimulate employee productivity, don't you agree?

Connect to Salesforce.com - More Enterprise Features Coming Soon

Business users will be happy to hear that RoamBi already connects to Salesforce.com, though the company plans to release a full-blown paid version of the service and the RoamBi server, which can be hosted behind a company's firewall, in about three months.

In many ways, the current version of the app is only a preview of the full functionality that RoamBi will give to enterprise customers who will be able to license the service's server.

Part I: Publisher

The iPhone app and the Publisher work hand in hand. The publishing application allows users to upload files or import them from Salesforce.com, decide which view to choose for a specific spreadsheet, modify which tables and columns to display in the new spreadsheet, and then publish the edits to the iPhone.

However, once these files are uploaded and published, we couldn't quite figure out if it was also possible to manage these documents (and unpublish them, for example), from the web app. It looks like this functionality is only available from the phone.

Part II: iPhone App

This isn't really something we expected we would say when we received RoamBi's PR pitch, but the application really makes spreadsheets sexy. While the absence of any editing mode might limit its functionality a bit more than we would have hoped, we have yet to see an app on a mobile device that can do what RoamBi can, and RoamBi's designers clearly know what they are doing.

We could describe the different views that RoamBi uses to visualize data in detail, but the best way to get a good feel for the functionality of the app is through the iPhone simulator on RoamBi's homepage.

The mobile app is extremely intuitive and manages to transform large spreadsheets, which are usually pretty unmanageable on a small screen, and turns them into small mini-apps which don't just look good, but also work just as you expect them to. The design makes good use of the phone's touch screen, and while some of the views look deceptively simple, the intuitive interface allows you to easily drill deeper into the data.

Give it a Try

For now, RoamBi is only available on the iPhone, and when we talked to the RoamBi team last week, they told us that they were watching the mobile market carefully, but that the iPhone currently offered the best experience for the kind of app that RoamBi wanted to develop. Given that about 80% of the RoamBi code was developed for the publisher and the server, though, the company should be able to release apps for more platforms relatively quickly.

Of course, in a perfect world, RoamBi would be part of an iPhone office suite, where users could not just view data, but also edit it in a similarly elegant user interface, but for now, RoamBi turns accessing spreadsheets on the go into a completely new and surprisingly pleasant experience, and we can only assume that its paid offering will find a lot of thankful users once it is released in a few months.

We suppose he could have used other comparisons, but none would have the impact of comparing the technology to sex. It's true, though. In fact, we'll even expand on that thought a bit. For example, at first, Twittering your thoughts may feel awkward and strange. It might even be a little uncomfortable. But give yourself time to get comfortable with the process and next thing you know, you'll be Twittering away, enjoying yourself in the process. In fact, you might even get to the point of craving Twitter. How many Twitter addicts out there have seen or heard something interesting and their first thought was "Oh man, I have to Twitter that!" (Our hands are raised.)

But the overall point of Colony's blog post was that you won't and you can't get social media unless you engage in it. That seems pretty straightforward to us, but you'd be surprised how many people think they're experts in the matter, despite having an abandoned Twitter account...or worse, none at all. And then there are the companies rejecting social media because "it's just not right for them" - a decision they've made without even so much as a few weeks of experimentation. How sad. Just remember Mr. or Ms. CEO, you may find social media a boring waste of time, but you'd better believe that your customers are out there using it everyday. Ignore it at your peril.

Oh no! The iPhone doesn't deliver? Businesses take heed? Well, that's what it sounds like. Except there's just one small problem here: Papa John's doesn't have an iPhone app - they have a mobile website.

In fact, if you read through the article, the doom-and-gloom story of the Papa John's iPhone app disaster may have you wondering if iPhone apps for businesses are even worthwhile.

After reading through the article, although confused as to the supposed app's failure, on a personal level I was excited. I didn't even know that Papa John's had an iPhone application, but I was definitely interested in downloading it. You see, where I live, Papa John's is the only pizza place that delivers. I've been eagerly awaiting an iPhone application like this since our household tends to order Papa John's pizza about once a month (well, if we aren't on diets). I immediately hopped over to iTunes and did a search. Query: "Papa John's" - no Papa John's apps found. Query: "Papa Johns" - still, no go. What gives? They were talking about an iPhone application, right?

Apparently not.

Actually, what Papa John's has is a mobile website at mobile.papajohns.com/iphone, which offers a store locator and shortcuts that take you to the main mobile ordering system - a system that sees 50% of its traffic from iPhones, by the way. And that's what McDonnell was referring to: a mobile website.

Say what you want, but a mobile site is NOT an app. If it were, then the Papa John's app could do nifty things like tap into the iPhone's GPS to display the nearest stores to the user's current location and offer those stores' current specials. It could store user account information in its settings so that every time the app was launched, it would remember your latest order... maybe even have a button that let you reorder with one click. And so much more.

But all it does is let you order from a mobile website and locate a store... you know, manually.

Given its limited nature, it wouldn't be surprising if Papa John's was only having moderate success with this "app"/mobile site. But the thing is, they are. According to McDonnell, the "app" has driven $1 million in revenue to the company. Um, that's actually kind of good. Now imagine what a REAL app could do. Unfortunately, McDonnel says Papa John's just isn't ready - they're only "dipping their toe in the pond" now and don't want to spend money on an honest-to-goodness iPhone application yet, much less start developing for other platforms.

Well, that's a shame because they haven't really even dipped their toe into the iPhone platform yet.

Papa John's, let us know when you actually launch an iPhone application, then you can tell us how well it works for you.

Of course, it is important to remember that Sophos is a security firm and has an interest in stressing these security risks.Though, the sentiment among system administrators is that this somewhat unscientific poll seems to be on par with what we have seen from similar reports.

Malware, Data Leakage, Lost Productivity

According to Sophos, around 40% to 50% of all businesses don't control access to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, while a slightly larger group of enterprises allow their users to use the more business-oriented LinkedIn. Those who control access cite lost productivity as the main reason more clamping down on social network usage at work, while about 12% to 17% cite a fear of malware and data leakage.

Interestingly, about 7% of respondents had no idea why they were controlling access to these sites. Similarly, around a quarter of all respondents couldn't say if they or their colleagues had ever been spammed on a social networking site, or if they had been the victim of a malware or phishing attack.

Even though businesses are afraid of social networks, Sophos advises against totally blocking off access as users will inevitably find ways around these blocks which will just create new security issues.

We would agree with this, but we would also point out that a lot of these scams and malware attacks still arrive by email. There are a number of legitimate business uses for social networks, as long as they don't include wiring large amounts of your company's money to a poor widow in Nigeria who needs help with a large wire transfer.

Author: Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com -- a boutique consultancy focusing on helping companies succeed. Ravit works with CEOs, marketing groups, and Social Media managers to craft customer-centric engagement strategies that result in higher customer value, stronger customer community, improved monetization, and higher profitability. Ravit authors a blog at www.ravitlichtenberg.com.

By now Facebook should be accustomed to criticism. Despite having had a tremendous growth spurt, it seems to be on a trial-and-error journey, guided by an ever-changing map and an elusive destination. In a way, it acts like a child in transition to puberty, slow to catch up on change, impressed by its new-found power, and definitely not bothered by such nuisances as "planning" for its future. But in the end, by will or by force, it too will have to grow up. What can Facebook do to make the transition less painful? What will it take for Facebook to start thinking like the grown-up company it is becoming?

Better to Have B-Level Strategy but A-Level Execution

That's what Kulwant Singh, Dean of the National University of Singapore's Business School, told us each day when we entered his classroom. It's a pretty basic principle, but one of the toughest for companies to uphold.

Facebook is still a pretty simple business: it is an online platform that facilitates community-building and provides multiple methods and points of interaction for users to express themselves and connect and share with each other. Its strategies, then, should also be pretty simple and its execution near flawless. That hasn't been the case, however. Facebook has failed to demonstrate that it is truly able to monetize its platform, and it continues to invest in meaningless endeavors, such as the recent redesign. This is due not to a lack of vision or talent but rather to the mile-long canyon between Facebook's strategy and its ability to execute.

Facebook's Strategy Simplified

In a recent interview, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, said the company will be focusing on growing its community and on monetization. To add some clarity to an otherwise generic statement, we can say that Facebook's strategy most likely includes these three key goals:

1. Increase user base. Grow network effect even beyond the current 175 million user base.
2. Increase wallet share. Leverage existing platform and find new ways to make money (e.g. applications, advertising, revenue share on partnerships, paid services).
3. Maintain and grow leadership in social media/networks. Effectively compete with and beat other online media platforms and tools on which users spend time and money, or form a partnership (like with Twitter) for a piece of the action.

As with all strategic plans, each of these goals can be further broken down into multiple objectives, each of which has its own specific requirements. All that's left to do is execute them. But in Facebook's case, the flow from strategy to execution is disjointed, resulting in a very bad case of broken telephone. What should have been a relatively easy and flawless execution has turned into a terrible blunder that continues to put Facebook in the hot seat for not realizing its potential.

Facebook Vision Realized

While it may have started out as a project by a couple of passionate students, Facebook today, like most successful startups, is in the business of making money. Advancing this vision does not mean spending what must have been countless hours of team meetings to discuss the corner radius on the new profile chicklets. Nor does it mean risking getting sued for quietly attempting to take over user data. It's time to lay down some fundamental principles to help Facebook bridge strategy and execution:

1. Start thinking like the large company you are becoming. Instead of kneejerk responses to competition and internal whim, Facebook needs to set a long-term vision and work backwards, taking into consideration priorities, technological capabilities, and company as well as (most importantly) user needs. When a company knows what targets to keep its eyes on, it can choose one of many roads depending on the circumstances at the time.
2. Choose an identity and stick with it. Is Facebook a fun startup, or a large successful company? Engineers and geeks, or business people? Is it about connecting or sharing information? The next couple of years are going to shape Facebook's identity and redefine its culture, focus, and value proposition. Planning ahead by testing a few ideas can be of tremendous help to reducing noise and confusion.
3. Listen to your users. It's not just about blogs, notes, and user comments. Facebook should proactively seek to understand its growing base of user segments, their needs and desires, and their relationship to upcoming technologies and Facebook's own strategic objectives. This will enable Facebook to design a complete experience (not thumbnails) that turns users into customers, while making it extremely difficult for competitors to match the experience.
4. Grow with your market segments: While Facebook may have started with tech-savvy early adopters, it is now certainly crossing the chasm and attracting different user segments. Does Facebook understand the value proposition it offers to each of these segments? What about the growing base of 35- to 49-year-olds who are now flocking to social networks? Does Facebook know how to keep its original evangelists active? Keeping a close eye on these evolving segments and making sure its services speak to their unique needs will be key to Facebook's success.
5. Implement a co-creation architecture. Facebook could learn a great deal from the open-source environment by creating both feedback and contribution channels. The addition of OpenID and the increased flexibility for developers were significant steps forward, but they need to be integrated into a more holistic tool set and be linked to a strategy that answers more than, "How do we make money off our users?"
6. Dare to change. Fear of change is one of the greatest pitfalls of established businesses and makes it easier for startups to take a significant share from them. Apple's iPhone, BlueNile, and Zappos are but a few examples. Only by focusing on the whole experience and daring to break out of its own mold will Facebook maintain momentum and growth.
7. Seal those gaps. This is a tough one for most people, more so for companies. It means pulling up the curtains, going from room to room, and figuring out what works and what doesn't. It also means sitting down and devising a strategy to address all those gaps in a way that enhances the business while not hindering its operation. Not an easy task, but crucial for growth.
8. Stay honest. Stating that public-figure pages are good for users is borderline disingenuous, and placing friends' photos on ads is probably grounds for lawsuits. Take the example of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, who says clearly that ads mid-program are Hulu's way of monetizing an otherwise free platform. Facebook should clearly distinguish between pursuing business objectives and meeting users' needs and should thus communicate the true intent of its actions.

For a people-based business, it's shocking how little attention Facebook pays to understanding its own users. Less shocking is how poorly it has been executing its strategy, given the nature of this developmental stage it is going through. Parents often look for signs that those terrible teenage years are over and that their child is finally coming out of his or her self-involved state. For Facebook, this will happen when execution matches strategy, when the terms "user" and "customer" are integral to every single one of its strategic goals, when useless design tweaks finally meet their end, and when Facebook provides services and goods that users actually want. If nothing else, though, we can always take comfort in knowing that teenagers don't stay teenagers for long.

As noted earlier, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test this past week at the DEMO conference. While I found a somewhat workable solution for sending out my contact info to others, I still collected a large stack of paper business cards from the people I met. These cards had to be digitized in order for them to be of any use to me. While people with administrative assistants are fortunate to have this tiresome data entry process handled for them, those of us without are stuck doing it ourselves. We can either sit at the keyboard for hours or use a scanner. Shouldn't there be a better way?

Surprisingly, there haven't been many options for getting our paper cards to digital format outside of using a business card scanner until now. While it's true that many people use these small, portable scanners to update their email or CRM contact lists, it's hard to believe that folks are truly satisfied with this solution.

Now, scanning in a card or two by themselves is not a big deal, but after returning from a trade show or conference, you'll often have a much larger stack of cards to deal with. What before was a quick few-minutes task now requires you to carve out a much larger chunk of your day. Since you've likely been out of the office for some time, you probably have much more pressing issues than dealing with those cards upon your return. That task goes immediately to the bottom of your priority list. Eventually the cards end up in a shoebox somewhere never to be seen again.

Today, however, we have a couple of new options for dealing with this situation. The first involves a company called Shoeboxed. Primarily a service which digitizes and categorizes receipts, they now do business card scanning, too. You can mail your cards to them (they can even send you an envelope!) and they will scan them in for you. The output is provided in a format which can be imported into Outlook, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Gmail, and most other contact programs.

More recently, Shoeboxed teamed up with note taking application Evernote to provide a solution that's a must-have for any active Evernote users. Through the new partnership, you're able to send any Shoeboxed content directly to Evernote where it then becomes searchable.

Option Two: CloudContacts

For those already ingrained in Evernote, the above is a great solution, but if you're starting fresh you might be interested in a single company instead of a combination service. A new option is CloudContacts, a service create by Allen Stern of Center Networks.

Like Shoeboxed, with CloudContacts you also have the option of mailing in your cards, either with your own envelope or the company can send you one.

If you work in an office, access to things like manila envelopes and stamps or postage machines is easy, but for home workers it often still requires an extra errand to the office supplies store and the Post Office. That's why when CloudContacts announced they would now accept emailed images sent from your camera phone, it finally became a reasonable option for me. This email service starts at $4.95 per month for 20 cards and $8.95 per month for 40 cards. To use the snail-mail CloudContacts service, it's an additional $29.95 to upload up to 100 business cards, $79.95 for up to 300 cards and $124.95 for up to 500 cards. You can go with just the email-only package, though. I did both.

Via Snail Mail

The postal mail option is really no harder than stuffing the cards in an envelope and putting them in the mailbox. However, there is a piece of paper you have to print out and put in the envelope, too, and that means you'll need to keep ink in your printer. (There's another trip to the office supplies store!) Again, unless you have a fully functional home office complete with envelopes, stamps, a printer, ink, etc., the snail mail option isn't ideal.

Via Email

Instead, taking a camera phone photo and emailing it is much easier and faster. You're provided with a special email address which you can add to your contact list in your phone for speedy access. As you're out and about, you can snap photos and email them right away so you don't end up with a stack of cards at the end of the day that need to be dealt with.

There was only one problem with the email option in my case. I'm an iPhone owner and the iPhone has a terrible camera. In fact, it's downright unusable with this service. But there is a workaround for that. It's called the Griffin Clarfi case for iPhone and it was recommended by numerous people I ran into this past week. This iPhone case comes with a built-in macro lens for close-up photography, allowing you to shoot what you want in incredible detail - like business cards, for example. At only $15 (US) on Amazon, the purchase was a no-brainer.

In the meantime, though, I had to use a regular camera to take the photos. Fortunately, CloudContacts let me send in a batch instead of one at a time.

Once the photos are received and digitized, you'll receive an email from the service (from Allen himself, actually). I asked if the personal attention I received was typical and surprisingly, it is. Allen says he believes that support can make or break a company.

The CloudContacts Web Site

When you log in to CloudContacts to see your data, the initial interface is no-frills - but in a good way. It's just a list of your contacts displaying their name, company, address, and phone number. A search box sits at the top of the screen if you need to look for a specific person.

Click on the view button for any contact and you'll be taken to a page where all their information is saved, including the photo of their business card. Also on this page is a Google map showing their address, links to their info on LinkedIn and Facebook, and, if known, their IM/chat networks are provided, too.

The data entered was entirely accurate. Apparently, that's because CloudContacts isn't doing OCR (Optical Character Recognition), or so reports VentureBeat. For data to be this accurate, it's easy to assume there are human editors on the other end, but Allen won't confirm this, calling it his "secret sauce." We're curious, of course, but as long as the data remains accurate, we suppose the magic can remain a mystery.

From any contact's page or from the main page of the site, you can click "edit" to add more details to the contact info including how you know them or other personal notes. There are also links for downloading an individual vCard or printing out a single contact's info.

Importing into Your Email

Again like Shoeboxed, you entire contact list can be exported into Standard CSV format, vCard format, Highrise CSV format, or in Yahoo/Gmail Contacts CSV format. Doing so provides a file which you can then import into your preferred program. Since Gmail merges duplicate contacts upon import, you can continue to use this option every time without worries of creating multiple versions of the same contact. Other programs may vary.

In Gmail, you're also able to tag your contacts upon import by adding them to a group. I've begun to use this option to group people by business and/or where we met (CES, DEMO, etc.). But with CloudContacts, I can't categorize or tag subsets of my contact list for selective import into Gmail. That would be a great feature. (Perhaps it will be added later - Allen seems open to feedback about the service.)

Conclusion: Worth It

When the iPhone case arrives, I'll probably turn off the snail mail service - I doubt I'll ever use it again at that point. But overall, the CloudContacts service was useful and worth the money spent - especially since I was able to get a backlog of cards into the system quickly. Now if they would just do an iPhone app too, I'd have a complete solution!

Image Credit: Andrew Turner

The newspaper industry is in a downward death spiral, having been severely impacted by new technologies, the ubiquity of internet access, and a rise in citizen journalism. Here in the U.S., some papers are filing for bankruptcy, others are close to doing the same, and there's even a proposal to give the newspaper industry a bailout plan of its own. Elsewhere in the world, it's more of the same. In Japan though, the country's high population of elderly citizens is keeping the papers afloat...for now, at least. But like everywhere else, they will soon have to face the future: young people don't do newsprint.

"I am in a dying industry," said Kenichi Miyata, a senior editor and writer at the Asahi newspaper, a daily with a circulation of 8 million. "Young people do not read newspapers, and our population is getting very old very rapidly."

Japanese Papers Collaborate on Mobile App

In many parts of the world, individual newspaper companies are trying different things to revitalize their industry. For example, we've seen a lot of innovation from the New York Times lately, as they embrace open data and APIs. (Disclosure: The NYTimes is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.) 

However, there's still a feeling of "it's everyone for themselves" when it comes to developing new business models. In Japan, however, three of the major newspapers have decided instead to band together. The papers are all members of the Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership, a group formed nearly a year ago to launch a web site that featured all their articles together in one place.

Now, those papers have once again collaborated on a new effort to bring their content to the tech-obsessed youth. Last week, the three collectively introduced an iPhone/iPod Touch application which delivers the cover stories, city news items, editorials, and pictures to the owners of Apple's smartphone.

The application is unique as it lets consumers browse and compare the coverage of news stories by the different papers all within one single interface.

Some Problems

The application is not without its faults, though. Although it sits at the top of the free apps section in the Japanese App Store, it's not very highly rated. This is because the app doesn't provide the full text of the papers, only abstracts. In order to read the complete article, users must click a link to go to the paper's main web site. That extra effort probably frustrates users, leading to its low rating of only 2 stars. In comparison, another news organization, Sankei Shimbun, has an app which does provide the full text. In time, through download counts and popularity ratings, it should become apparent how important full text is to a newspaper app's success.

At the moment, the new collective iPhone/iPod application isn't monetized, but the companies involved hope it will motivate customers to actually read the physical newspapers. We doubt that will happen, but it will certainly be interesting to follow the success or failure of this newspaper triad. Will there be safely in numbers? We don't know yet, but it's a possibility worth looking into.