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Salesforce integrates with Facebook & Amazon

Ron Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:01:03 -0500

Salesforce.com announced this week, at its Dreamforce developer's conference, that it was getting into the web hosting business. Customers will also be able to build new applications via Facebook API and Amazon web services API. The combined offering could enable companies to build intranets, websites and web-based applications and run them in an environment hosted by Salesforce.com. The new services provide a foothold for Salesforce to offer services over and above its own software. Article

Facebook co-founder, colleague leave for new collaboration

Ron Miller — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:14:28 -0400

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and colleague engineer Justin Rosenstein surprised a few people when they announced they were leaving Facebook to start a new company that will help facilitate collaboration in the enterprise. What that means exactly still isn't clear, but in an email Rosenstein made public that there could be some hints:

"We see this new venture as very complimentary to Facebook," he said. "We hope our products will become to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life. Our software will use Facebook Connect as the default option for identity and authentication. Our user interface will adopt many of Facebook’s conventions, creating a seamless and familiar experience for current Facebook users. And if our new development tools turn out to be useful, we hope the Facebook engineering team will come to adopt them."

If you read between the lines, it sounds to me like they are planning on creating a Facebook experience in the enterprise. If you're wondering why the two didn't just do that at Facebook, Moskovitz explains in an email:

"I wouldn’t have agreed with asking the company to divert significant resources to approach a project so different and so boundless in scope. Every time we introduce something new, we do it at an opportunity cost and this is too large a detour to take when we are already moving swiftly in the right direction."

Whatever the project is, it involves collaboration, seems to use the Facebook platform, and is too different to do in-house (or they were looking for a good excuse to leave, all the happy talk aside). It should be interesting to see what becomes of this project in the coming months. There certainly is a strong technical pedigree behind it.

For more information:
- read this VentureBeat article

Socialtext launches version 3.0

Ron Miller — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:28:52 -0400

The web was buzzing on Tuesday with news about the latest release from Socialtext. Up until now, Socialtext has been mostly known as an enterprise Wiki vendor, but they have added new functionality that brings an array of Web 2.0 concepts into the enterprise. According to an entry on Socialtext's blog from chairman, president and company co-founder Ross Mayfield, Socialtext 3.0 has three main new features:

Socialtext People - Social networking for the enterprise.
Socialtext Workspace - Group-editable wiki for easy, flexible, enterprise-wide collaboration.
Socialtext Dashboard - Customizable home pages that let each person decide where to focus their attention.

Robert Scoble does a nice job of rounding up comments around the web on his Scobelizer blog, and includes an exclusive video of Mayfield demonstrating the new features. What's exciting is that it combines several different consumer-style Web 2.0 apps, including Facebook- and Twitter-style functionality, and packages them in an enterprise context.

The centerpiece is a customizable social dashboard that lets you design what information you want to see, which people you want to follow, and so forth. It remains to be seen how this operates in the field, but on paper, it certainly looks very exciting. If your company is thinking about Enterprise 2.0, you should explore this new product.

For more info:
- check out Scoble's web round-up
- watch 60 second demo of new features

Elgg gives you safe, open source social networking

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:33:34 -0400

Social networking offers lots of collaboration and knowledge-sharing benefits. If you've been looking for a safe, open source social networking alternative to the likes of Facebook, you should take a look at Elgg. You can set up social networks similar to Facebook, but you can have complete control over who belongs, and if content and information gets exposed over the open web or not. This means you could set up networks by project, department, or even company-wide as you see fit for the needs of your organization. Each user also has granular privacy, allowing individuals to control who sees what information about them. Because of this control, Elgg has proven popular with educators looking for a low-cost social networking tool that gives administrators control over where student content goes. Enterprise environments have similar requirements, and Elgg satisfies the needs of both settings. Check out Elgg

ShoZu wins Gold for Mobile 2.0 innovations

Michael LoPresti — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:37:14 -0400

ShoZu is mobile utility that aims to speed and simplify the process of interacting with online social media from the mobile phone by enabling users to connect to more than 50 online Web 2.0 destinations. It was recently deemed an exceptional company in the Mobile 2.0 marketplace when it was awarded the top prize in Juniper Research's Future Mobile Awards. Juniper singled out ShoZu because it has some solid numbers to back up the effectiveness of its product--the average ShoZu user generated 20 content uploads or downloads per month, with heavy users generating in excess of 100 such "events." The selection criteria utilized by the Juniper judges included innovation; customer retention and growth; commercial deployment; ease of use; revenue generation; pricing; and capability/functionality.

ShoZu allows users to access a multiplicity of Web 2.0 sites from a single interface, including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, and many others. This eliminates the need to open a mobile browser and navigate each community. Users can mass-publish any photo, video, or other updates to multiple sites from the iPhone or Blackberry. ShoZu CEO Mark Bole said that the company's goal is to help users "manage their online social lives from the handset."

For more:
- read Juniper's announcement of the award