Social Networking, Social Engagement News & Guidance

This week news hit that Goldman Sachs has invested US$ 450 million dollars in Facebook, in addition to the US$ 50 million dollar contribution from Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies. With around 500 million Facebook users, that’s a dollar for every user. So what does it mean?

2010 may become known as the Year of the Knowledge Worker. This year has been packed with strategies and technologies designed to make knowledge work more efficient and easier, if not faster. Here's our look back what the events that shaped Enterprise Collaboration in 2010.

An early Christmas came to Facebook fans last week when a staff member accidentally leaked various product prototypes and works in progress. The entire platform went out of service for approximately an hour in response to the leak, but the damage had been done. Here's a look at what you can probably expect to see from the network:

You've undoubtedly heard the news: Facebook's 26-year-old co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was named TIME magazine's Person of the Year 2010. Naturally the whole Web is freaking out, but let's take a look at why the choice makes sense. 

According to a recent Pew Internet study, only 8% of online Americans use Twitter, but they aren't all active users.

During the planning stages of many SharePoint Intranet projects, the topic of profile pages will invariably come up. SharePoint offers a feature called MySites and every organization seems to want to implement it from the get go. But it's not that simple, or that smart.

When Bitrix (news, site) released v9.0 of Intranet Portal earlier this year it added Bitrix video, security and process management updates. This week, the introduction of v9.5 focuses on Enterprise 2.0 functionality and drops the ‘portal’ out of its name.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Twitter Adds New Content Providers
• Beware Shortened Links on Twitter, Facebook
• Tumblr Explains Downtime
• Facebook Unveils new Profile Page Layout

With all the talk of social media and its benefits for SMBs, new research from Webroot reveals that many enterprises are still restricting employee access. In other news, Intelestream and Insideview partner for extended CRM-on-demand, making it accessible to all and Linux Box releases its free email archiving solution.

The interface between social networking and email as well as where enterprise collaboration is going has been the subject of a lot of speculation recently. Only this week, at Gartner’s Symposium/ITxpo 2010, Gartner’s Monica Basso added to the mix by suggesting that by 2014 social networking will replace email for interpersonal business communications.

The relaunch of BroadVision’s Clearvale social business platform is its second upgrade in less than a year. The release aims to re-establish the California-based company as a major player in the Enterprise 2.0 space by offering enterprises Clearvale as a platform for selling their services.

Remember Precurio (news, site)? The company released its free enterprise intranet portal software for one-point information access earlier this year. Today they're back in the headlines with Precurio 2.1, an extremely widget-friendly and personalized experience. 

It has taken almost ten months to release, but IBM (news, site) has finally unveiled Lotus Connections v3.0, which includes advanced social media analytics and enhanced mobile access, as well as a number of new services that will help enterprises develop and deploy an effective social media presence.

In Intranet Benefits for Human Resource Management, we highlighted the benefits that intranets could play for HR departments. Today we continue our discussion with some of the basic scenarios for HR leveraging an enterprise intranet and the benefits that are delivered.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Who 'Owns' A Twitter Account: Employer or Employee?
• The Top Engaged Brands in Social Media
• Digg Cuts Staff, Re-Focuses
• Foursquare Launches Badges To Encourage Voting