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the Free CMSWire Newsletter2011 was the year of the Social Business. We saw employees across all types of organizations using both desktop-bound and mobile social tools to interact with the entire business ecosystem. But, while there's no question about organizations increasingly using these tools to collaborate and communicate, were enterprises truly able to capture their full potential? Let's take a look back at a few highlights from the past year.
Social Tools
Twitter Gets More Money and a New Business Model
In the microblogging scene, 2011 seemed to be Twitter's year. The microblogging service got a few rounds of financing to the tune of several hundred million dollars. In August, series G financing fetched US$ 800 million, and we recently reported on another US$ 300 million investment. Can you say "US$ 10 billion valuation" in less than 140 characters?
But apart from money, Twitter has reinvented itself not once, but twice, this year. The #NewTwitter that had been in preview for so long was finally put in place as the default interface for everyone. But that was short-lived. Just a few weeks after, Twitter launched a redesign, this time introducing a new tabbed interface that focused on connections, discovery, and "me." Twitter is gearing up to launch its microblogging service as an advertising platform (finally?), and this year's rounds of financing will give it leeway to play around a bit with its business model prior to (finally?) running an IPO.
Facebook Launches Timeline, iPad App & an Annoying Ticker
Facebook has acknowledged that mobile is the way to go, and has revamped and relaunched its mobile clients — for iOS, Android and mobile web — for easier access to search and commonly-used functions. This year, Facebook teased users with an iPad application, which had been leaked to much excitement by iPad users prior to its official launch. Facebook has also revamped its profiles user interface, with Timeline, through which a user's profile is changed from a static page with connections and interests to a single scrolling page, where an account's entire lifetime is presented in reverse-chronological order.
Even with these improvements in mobile apps and profile interfaces, Facebook has been panned for the dreaded ticker, which seems to keep on updating users about friend activities, up to the latest sneeze and wink. Add to this the intrusive way some apps broadcast which webpage or content you have recently read without your consent. Pros and cons aside, one thing that Facebook got right is the way it will improve business-to-customer communication with the upcoming Private Messages for Pages feature and its newly-launched Subscribe button for websites. Will these features and the social network's 800+ million users give the company enough momentum for its rumored 2012 IPO?
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