Communities News & Articles

One of the most well-known SharePoint-based social computing vendors, NewsGator (news, site) has just announced an acquisition deal with Tomoye (news, site) that expands their solution offering and markets, and could just put them above the rest for an end-to-end Enterprise 2.0 platform.

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston in June, Tomoye demoed the latest version of their enterprise community and social networking platform for SharePoint. Now that latest version -- 3.0 -- is available and it has a number of new features and licensing models that may interest you.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference wrapped up in Boston last week. The key message coming out of this conference? It's not about the deployment of technology, it's about adoption. Along with the chance to see some interesting solutions, there were a number of sessions on getting started with these tools in your organization.

Remember us telling you that Tomoye (news, site) was demoing the latest version of their community solution at the Enterprise 2.0 conference? Well we finally got a little more detail on what's new in Communities 3.0. Take a quick walk with us through the community updates.

It's a day for news on the Enterprise 2.0 front and Telligent (news, site) wants you to hear what they've been hard at work on. It's about that time of the year when Telligent offers up a new version of their community solutions. This time, instead of simply a new version number with some new functionality, we get major products upgrades and new branding to boot.

Say goodbye to Community Server, Community Server Evolution and Harvest Reporting Server. Say hello to Telligent Community 5.0, Telligent Enterprise 2.0 and Telligent Analytics 3.0.

Oh, and for those of you interested in Telligent Graffiti, we have a little update, but don't get too excited.

Tomoye (news, site) has a new version of their Community software available as a Public Beta starting today. Tomoye Community Software 3.0 is community and social networking application that can be deployed standalone or as an add-on for Microsoft SharePoint.

We gave you an overview of the current release of the community software back in November of last year. That version offered communities based on themes, expert classification, community metrics and a SharePoint powerpack.

The latest version, also being demonstrated at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston for the next three days, includes the ability to show information and people based on being voted most helpful or most connected. Community members also have a say on what's displayed on the community home page through voting.

That's probably not all this new version of Tomoye can do, but unless you sign up for their public beta, you can't seem to find much more information.

We'll be digging that up and bringing it to you as soon as possible. Until then, check them out at the Enterprise 2.0 conference or sign up for that public beta to see for yourself.

Get the feeling this isn't the only social networking, community announcement coming this week? Yeah, neither do we... Stay tuned!

Interesting news in the pipeline for Telligent (news, site). Founder and CEO Rob Howard has released the reigns of the company he founded almost 5 years ago to Patrick Brandt.

Well, released the reigns -- sort of. Howard has been appointed the new CTO of Telligent. A position that he feels right at home in.

If you are listening closely, there are probably a lot of employees in your organization with a lot of great ideas. Problem is, they aren't getting to the right people. Newsgator (news, site) has a solution to help you bring those ideas to the forefront. It's called Social Site Ideas and it is part of the latest release of Social Sites 2.7.

There is not an organization out there today who isn't implementing or planning some kind of enterprise social computing solution. There are a lot of things to consider when developing your strategy and just as many technological solutions out there to choose from.

Here we offer you 8 articles on social computing, some focused on the plan, some focused on the technical solution. Both will provide you plenty of information to focus on your plans.

When you start thinking about whether or not you need a community, there are likely a dozen questions running through your mind -- at least there should be. If you haven't taken the time to think about what a community will achieve for your organization, then don't go buying the technology to create one.

If you need a little guidance along your path, CMSWire talked with two community evangelists: Lawrence Liu, Director of Platform Strategy at Telligent (news, site) and George Dearing, Telligent Evangelist about how to tell if you need one, how to approach a community strategy and what are some key features in community solutions.

Whether you choose to go the path of Telligent Community Server or not, there's some solid information to take home and think about.

Let's talk about social computing. Or we can talk about communities. Or we can talk about enterprise 2.0 and social networking, blogging, forums, wikis, what have you. Regardless of what you choose to call it, there's a need to analyze what is happening when you deploy or harness social tools. And, no, we are not talking about basic traffic stats. 

Telligent (news, site) has a keen awareness of this need. Hence we have Harvest Reporting Server -- social analytics for their social computing solutions, Community Server and Community Server Evolution. Interested in getting a better feel for what social analytics really are and how you can leverage them, we spent some time with Telligent. This is what we learned.

MindTouch (news,site) is all about the enterprise. This open source collaboration platform is all over connecting enterprise applications, web services and Web 2.0 applications for teams to work together fulfilling business objectives.

But MindTouch has decided it wants to go just a little bit farther. They have announced MindTouch 2009 -- a new developer platform for social collaboration and communities. And to go along with that, a bi-directional message bus that extends their collaborative capabilities even further.

It's going to be an interesting Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco next week. Among the announcements, you can expect to hear from IGLOO Software. At the conference they will be unveiling their new framework for building community solutions.

The new Online Community Platform has four primary components to it including:

• Theme Manager: Control the brand of your community through layouts and design.
• Global Configuration Panel: Turn applications on and off
• Widget Manager: Drag and drop capability as well as create and configure custom built widgets
• Open API's: Integration with other applications and solutions including CRM, ERP and cloud-based solutions such as Salesforce.com and Google Gadgets.

IGLOO is banking on their Open API's and widget based architecture to push their Online Community Platform to the forefront as it will enable organizations to get a community up and running quickly. Integration with key third party content and applications will also contribute to its ability to deliver. After all, it's clear that a community that operates in a silo does not add advantage to an organization.

"The new platform is all about flexibility and modular applications that enable interconnected networks of teams and individuals within an organization to work together more efficiently and effectively," says David Shak, VP of Platform Development for IGLOO Inc.

Want to see how easy their framework is to use? Watch this video or read the presentation.

Communities are fast becoming an important part of any business strategy -- whether they are internal communities, customer communities, partner communities or some combination thereof.

The choices on technical solution are numerous -- a recent Forrester report indicated there were over 100 community solutions in the marketplace today. This probably doesn't include solutions that come as part of a web content management platform. While we won't review all of them, CMSWire will take a look at some of the more well-known, and some not so well known solutions.

We encourage your feedback on our review process and suggestions for products to review. Submit your ideas to editorial team (contact info here).

The first community solution review we have for you hails from Sabre Holdings -- these are the guys who bring us Travelocity and all those airline reservation systems we love to hate.

Recently released to the general public, cubeless is a hosted internal -- or corporate -- community solution. It is a simple community solution without all the functionality you typically see in the more well-known offerings, but that doesn't mean its not worth looking at. In fact, it may mean just the opposite -- depending on your requirements.

IBM (news, site) has taken another step into the future with the launch of its North American Enterprise Content Management Systems Community.

Although only in its infancy, blog authors and community creators Ian Story and Ranjun Chauhan describe it as a community that will serve as a collaboration point for all users of the IBM ECM suite of products.