SocialText Becomes Really Social
Collaboration, Social Networking September 30th, 2008
Socialtext, the enterprise wiki company is no more… a wiki company, that is. Not since Socialtext 3.0, the new release announced today.  Founder and Chairman Ross Mayfield calls his new baby a Connected Collaboration Platform, that’s modular, built on a widget framework, and consists of:
- Socialtext Dashboard – your Communication Central
- Socialtext People – Facebook for the Enterprise
- Socialtext Workspace – originally known as the wiki
A fourth piece, Socialtext Signals is in the works, in private beta testing – I guess we could call it Twitter (Yammer? ESME?) for the Enterprise. Actually more, since it involves active microblogging – quick messages – as well as pulling in what users do elsewhere (FriendFeed?)
The platform is flexible, easy to customize via widgets, clearly the vision is that in an enterprise environment actionable information is pulled in from the transactional systems, too – i.e. ERP, CRM.
Knowing Ross as the uber-social guy something tells me this is what he always wanted to to: create Social Software. But I tend to agree with Jevon MacDonald, who differentiates social software from the wiki, which is primarily a collaboration tool. So Ross was really in the collaboration business and given his name became synonymous with wiki evangelism, he will no doubt have a hard time changing that image. 
This is not to say the wiki part, should be neglected… It is the primary collaboration facility for anything not well handled by process-driven, transactional systems, and all this social layer is just the glue that holds it all together. (Hint: you will hear a lot more about Glue soon).
I had in the past been quite critical of Socialtext’s wiki component, and am looking forward to revisit it, as part of our wiki-series in the coming weeks @ CloudAve. In the meantime, enjoy this video:
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Tags: atlassian, Clearspace, Collaboration, confluence, enterprise 2.0, jive, microblogging, Social Software, socialtext, wiki
Zoli Erdos
[...] Zoli Erdos says “Socialtext Becomes Really Social.” [...]
Zoli, I put a video of Ross Mayfield, co-founder of Socialtext, demonstrating the new features to me: http://scobleizer.com/2008/09/30/exclusive-video-socialtext-brings-enterprise-facebook-and-twitter-to-wikis/
Great, Robert, will link.. for now i says video not available….
Here’s a video that I shot a few weeks ago where Ross Mayfield presents SocialText 3.0
http://www.atelier-us.com/e-business-and-it/article/socialtext-brings-key-web-20-features-to-the-workplace
[...] Zoli Erdos says “Socialtext Becomes Really Social.” [...]
It’s great to see where this space is headed–toward a more integrated, dynamic and engaging place for the enterprise. This re-announcment (originally announced last spring) is a clear indication of MindTouch’s leadership in the enterprise collaboration space, seeing that we’ve been providing this kind of integration with social tools, Web 2.0 apps, web services AND Enterprise systems like SugarCRM, Salesforce, Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics, ERP systems and much more.
While I think this is a step in the right direction for Socialtext, connecting legacy and enterprise systems is what’s missing here.
For example: http://www.viddler.com/explore/MindTouch/videos/42/
Sarah,
Bits and pieces were released earlier, but not the whole enchilada, to the best of my knowledge.
And yes, I am very interested in MindTouch, and believe me, we will cover you in detail in our upcoming series on CloudAve.
But this is ST’s day:-)
Zoli, I think you’re right…SocialText is saying that 3.0 is out of beta, not that it’s never been revealed. I’m also pretty sure the details on Signals are new.
One thing is for sure: I don’t think any of this amounts to a “clear indication” of MindTouch’s (or any other competitor’s) leadership in collaboration software.
Any idea if they’re continuing the open source model with 3.0?