Latest Social Business News & Articles

Crowdsourcing is not new, but people are using it in innovative ways. We’ve heard of using crowdsourcing platforms to facilitate logo design, the value of emerging technologies and translation services. We can now add slogans and taglines to the list.

Picturepark, a Swiss vendor of browser-based DAM software, is trying to make digital asset management a more friendly process with the latest version of its SaaS and on-premises software. Picturepark 8.3 features upgrades aimed at improving both overall ease of use and collaborative discussions and workflows.

If you’ve been following the fortunes of SharePoint, or ever searched for a SharePoint alternative for enterprise collaboration and document management, you’ve probably come across UK-based huddle. In the coming months you’re likely to see more of it following the successful completion of Series C funding worth US$ 24 million.

Newly annointed Sir Jony Ive says his current work will be his finest yet. Surely he's not talking about a minor refresh to the world's most popular smartphone (as far as ad clicks are concerned) according to the latest Adfonic survey?

Mindjet has rolled its most powerful products into one comprehensive solution for growing businesses.

There has been a lot written on the value an engaged community can bring an organization. There's also a lot of great advice on how to be a great Community Manager. But if you are still struggling to figure out how to do it right — from the start — or wondering how your current community stacks up, there's a new community framework available to help you out.

Social marketing is expanding beyond the social media and marketing teams as many companies embrace the concept “employee advocates.” Unless you are in a circle of social media gurus or happen to be one, you might not be aware of this new trend of leveraging employee advocates to promote a brand. However, it seems to be taking root, and social media solution provider Dachis Group has announced a tool that makes it easier to do.

With so many disruptive technologies emerging in the marketplace, why are there still so many aspects of business life that seem to be immune to them? Movie theaters are designing sections exclusively for Tweeters, but the office boardroom is still void of tools that can foster collaboration and innovation. In a recent ebook, Alfresco sought to get to the bottom of things.

Facebook’s IPO isn’t the only thing happening in social media. Microsoft has finally launched its experimental  social network, So.cl. The company released details about the network back in December after accidentally leaking the homepage a few months earlier. So.cl is live. Why should anyone care?

The word on social influence is starting to sound a lot different than it did a couple of years ago. Not only are people quickly abandoning the concept (most in favor of social advocacy) — they're hating on it, too. A recently popular example comes from Tom Scott, creator of a tool called Klouchebag. The self-billed "standard of asshatery" basically flips a 180 on Klout's algorithm for a cutting — albeit entertaining — insta-douche-o-meter.

For marketers, the new message is clear: digital popularity doesn't matter one (c)lick when it comes to building brand loyalty.

Or does it?

Developing a new tech platform? Looking to invest in one? If only there was a way to kick the tires and evaluate its true value in advance. Now there is. Last week, Spigit and Aragon Research launched the Open Forecast Project, a community designed to leverage the power of crowds to accurately size and value emerging technology markets.

As the divide between personal and work mobile devices erodes, let's take some time to explore some companies and ideas that may drive changes in the mobile world for the rest of 2012.

There's been nothing more talked about this week than the Facebook IPO. Not just because a lot of people are going to make a lot of money — well OK, maybe that's exactly why everyone is so jazzed up. It's been reported that more than 1000 millionaires were created yesterday.

The FB stock closed at a mediocre US$ 38.23 with a market cap of US$ 104.82 billion — roughly 50% of Google's market value. A vigorous first day on the market saw 580 million shares trade hands but not much of the spike that many expected.

But we see more here. The IPO signifies notable things for big data and acts as a health signal for the social business space overall.

Beyond the Facebook IPO chatter, we've been looking at changes taking place within the social enterprise:

• Say 'No' to Expensive Intranets
• Social Business Software - Solitary Child, Amongst Close Friends or Mr. Popular?
• How Mobile is Changing Organizational Structures and the Future Workplace

REMINDER: Next Wednesday, May 23rd, our Mobile Experience Tweet Jam takes place and we'd love to see you there. Get the details here.

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• Gartner's Cool Vendors in Content Management Are Social, Collaborative, Cloud-based
• A WEIRD Way to Select Your New Enterprise CMS
• Say 'No' to Expensive Intranets
• Gartner's Cool Social CRM Vendors Feed Information Into Business Processes
• Apple's New Features for iOS 6 on the Map? Plus, More Mini iPad Rumors

Editor's Picks

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• Organize SharePoint Content: Don't Upgrade Your Mess
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• Social Business Software - Solitary Child, Amongst Close Friends or Mr. Popular?
• Adobe Updates on Communities, e-Commerce & a New Cloud Manager

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• Assess Your Four Customer Experience Competencies
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Featured Events (all events | post your event)

• May 30 — (Webinar) How to Drive Innovation, Productivity with a Social Intranet
• Jun 03 — Semantic Technology & Business Conference San Francisco
• Jun 18 — Enterprise 2.0 Summit Boston
• Jun 19 — The Gamification Summit San Francisco
• Jun 26 — Forrester's Customer Experience Forum New York

Featured Jobs (all jobs | post your job)

• Content Manager — Textbooks in Seattle at Amazon
• Web Content Editor in California at Esri
• Director of Solution Services in San Francisco at Limelight Networks
• Software Sales Representative in Sydney at Telerik
• UX Designer in Virginia at Appian

Facebook has just made its phenomenal initial public offering at NASDAQ, and industry observers are talking of how big the impact of the social network's IPO will be, outside of newly-minted millionaires and billionaires of the Internet age. But, apart from Facebook's new found influence and clout in the financial scene, there is also one additional driver of growth for what can be considered the de facto social network for most of the world's online citizens: Asia.

Forrester Research refers to social activities streams which connect enterprise social tools to adjacent collaboration, content, portal, and productivity applications in the environment as a “bridge” to “socially enabled” enterprise applications. Evaluating leading vendors in the current activities stream marketplace, Forrester has placed Yammer, Salesforce and Tibco at the head of the list, with VMware (Socialcast) and Neudesic cited as “strong performers".

It’s the eve of Facebook’s IPO and everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about it.

Startups are quite adept at turning brands into verbs, or even ordinary verbs into brands. You can now "google" things you want to search for or "tweet" short updates online. Brace yourself for another potential verb that's about to become very popular in the social media scene: buffer. 

The Intranet is dead! Long live the Intranet! …so the refrain goes.

The promise of the Intranet was that it was going to liberate content and spread the wealth locked inside information repositories, closed networks, siloed file systems and even physical file cabinets. In many ways Intranets — when done well — have improved life behind the firewall.

However, we are far from the holy grail.

A Forrester Research survey found that just 43% of enterprise employees access an intranet every day. Worse, 35% don’t even use their intranet on a monthly basis.

The fact is that Intranet promises have not been fully realized, and this is exactly where the power of social comes in.

Social Intranets - The Promise

Social Business technology supplies the essential functionality missing from conventional intranets and turns them into the dynamic collaborative environments known as social intranets.

The promise of Social Intranets is to build on the successes of the original Intranet vision, but add these benefits:

• Open up content creation and curation to the full enterprise, leveraging the wisdom of the crowd
• Break down the walls between people, groups and departments via tools as simple as the @joesmith reference.
• Utilize internal social graph intelligence to enhance the relevancy of the intranet experience, improve search results and reduce the time to task completion
• Efficiently capture ideas and harness the innate innovation found in your workforce, leading to a more robust and streamlined ideation process

To learn more about how these benefits are being realized in practice, you can join the upcoming social intranet panel discussion on May 30th (live and online).

Infographic — The Benefits of a Social Intranet

Join the Social Intranet Best Practices Panel Discusion

On May 30th you can join in for a live, online panel discussion focused on current trends and best practices for designing, implementing and succeeding with a Social Intranet.

Panel members include:

• Dion Hinchcliffe of the Dachis Group will discuss at a high level, the latest industry research and trends on how leading companies are revamping dusty, soul-sucking intranets, and giving employees a social, collaborative, engaging experience that drives productivity, fosters innovation, and yields staggering results.
• Tyson Cornell of PricewaterhouseCoopers will dig a level deeper, into the strategies and processes that global enterprises are using to deploy Social Business Software — both to drive business transformation, and to add value to existing communication and information infrastructures.
• Tiffany LaBanca and Kristen Ritter of News Corporation will round out the panel, sharing a case study of how their company is becoming a social-powered organization. News Corporation's OurNews Social Business Network is changing the way the company communicates, collaborates, and innovates — connecting more than 50 businesses and 15,000 employees on a unified global platform.

If social intranet success is your curiosity or mandate, sign-up for the online panel discussion here. 

This article was sponsored by Jive Software.

Although many businesses agree that enterprise social networking platforms improve knowledge sharing and collaboration, many do not properly track benefits of social to overall business impact and value.

When I cracked open the e-pages of Steve Nicholls' new book, Social Media in Business, I was immediately hooked, especially when I read this:

"Organizational problems are really cleverly disguised people issues. Social media is a people issue; the technology is the enabler. The attitudes and beliefs of people will be more important than the technical issues."

Those words, in a book targeted at those in the enterprise, are the first CIOs, CTOs, CEOs and others in the C-suite will read (provided the read the preface). It’s refreshing as well as revolutionary. And that’s the point.