Blogging

Socialcast, a company that impressively applies to business ideas from FriendFeed and Twitter, continues to refine its product.

The vision for a new release of the service, according to CEO Timothy Young, is to make it a universal, real-time platform for business communication. This means precisely nothing by itself. What the company is trying to do is this: take its FriendFeed-like person-to-person messaging system, and make it communicate with business tools like bug databases and CRM systems. So, for example, if you’re subscribed to Suzy Sunshine in Sales, and she publishes a call report in Salesforce, you’ll see the gist of the report in Socialcast immediately after she enters it.

More importantly, you’ll be able to reply to the report from within Socialcast, and then other people in your network will see that dialogue. And it will get archived into the Salesforce system so people who work primarily in that system will also see the dialogue.

Personally, I’d love to use a system like this to track items in Bugzilla, not to mention various other internal corporate workflow systems, like our expense reimbursement product.

Young talked about this feature with me in September and says it’s rolling out now. He says Socialcast isn’t just a communications platform, like Twitter. He also calls it a “discovery engine” because it lets you discover what other people in your workplace are doing–even if they’re not using Socialcast directly.

Socialcast is now a free hosted service, but the company will sell you an installable version of it, if you want it behind your firewall. It also offers setup services for a fee.

In the future, Young says, the company will offer “social business intelligence” tools on top of its services to tell you how information flows in a company. He says executives and human resources pros may use the data to find out who the “connectors” are in a company or to get reports on trending topics in the company.

Socialcast looks a lot like Twitter or FriendFeed, but it's designed to tap into corporate work flow systems.

(Credit: Socialcast)

I expect that Socialcast will end up competing with Google Wave, but Young thinks that it will become a front end to Wave installations.

The company has 5,600 customers, Young says, and just less than 1 million users. Customers include NASA and Guitar Center.

View post:
Socialcast rolls out workplace ‘discovery engine’

In the mood for some free stuff? Of course you are. Surely banking on the idea that everyone loves to get something for nothing, Socialcast (news, site) recently announced a treat for their users: free networks.

Corporate social networks, that is. Effective immediately, employees of any company can visit Socialcast’s website and join their company’s private community using their corporate email address. Meanbwhile,

In the old days—like, six or seven years ago—if someone had a bad experience with a company, he or she generally vented about it to a few friends and that was the end of it. The emergence of social media changed all that of course, so now that person can vent online to, essentially, the entire world. And search engines love social media, which helps expose that rant to anyone searching for the company’s name.

Lee Odden recently framed this topic effectively in a post about digital reputation management, noting “There are plenty of CEOs, executives, brand and business managers that are facing the dilemma of what to do about their company and brand reputation online…Companies like Kryptonite Locks, Comcast, Dell, Walmart and Sony have all experienced what it’s like to ignore the influence of the social web and the subsequent effect on how their brands are reflected, both in the search results and within social media channels.”

This Time, It’s Personal

What these CEOs and other executives also need to appreciate is the importance of their personal brand. These individuals are often the “face” of their organizations; as they get quoted in press releases and news articles, pen bylined articles, speak at conferences, and talk to industry influencers and prospective customers, their names can become almost as well known as their brands. That makes it crucial for business leaders even at smaller companies who may not in the past have considered themselves “public figures” to manage not only their firms’ online reputations, but also their own.

A few examples. One executive I know, the president of a software company, shares the first page of Google with a biomedical researcher, a diplomat, a (not exactly best-selling) author, and the Facebook page of a college student from North Dakota. While that isn’t a terrible group to potentially be confused with, this executive has a sufficiently unique name that he should be able to own more of the real estate on this page, including the top spot (he’s currently #5), thereby making himself—and his company—easier to find.

Another executive acquaintance has things a bit worse. He shows up on the first page alright, but several of the links are to dot-com-meltdown era news articles about a company he worked with that had some of the typical problems of tech companies at the time (collapsing stock price, low on cash, disgruntled shareholders etc.). The full story is that he wasn’t the cause of these problems at all; he was hired to fix them, which he did, successfully taking the company prviate and turning it around. But a casual Googler wouldn’t get that story from the page one results without really digging.

On the other side of the ledger are individuals such as Jon Rognerud and Guy Kawasaki. Jon has a somewhat unusual name obviously (and the “Jon” spelling helps), but he isn’t the only person on the planet with that moniker. Yet he owns the first five pages of Google for his identity. Guy owns at least the first ten pages of Google (being a best-selling author helps) and none of the references are disparaging.

How To Be Seen

Granted, it may not be realistic for executives with more common surnames and less fame to achieve quite those levels, but most could nevertheless dramatically improve their personal online reputation management using the following techniques.

• Buy yourname.com if it is available. Use the domain to build a professional website (e.g., GuyKawasaki.com) or redirect it to a suitable page, such as the Management Team page on your corporate site.
• While you’re at it, spend the $95 to own your personal LookupPage.
• Make sure the Management Team page on your company website is optimized for your name.
• If you can make the time commitment, start your own blog. At the very least, look for opportunities to write guest-posts and/or get interviewed for blogs related to your industry.
• Write an article (or articles) for Google Knol on topics pertaining to your product or service. As an example, here’s one I wrote about records management. You can link to other blog posts, published articles, white papers or other informational content your company has produced about the topic.
• Record a short video introducing yourself and your company to potential customers and anyone else who may be interested. For examples, see the Pitches section on TechCrunch. Use your name in the title of the video (e.g. firstname-lastname-of-companyname.mp4). Upload the video to YouTube and Vimeo so it’s easy to share on blogs and other sites.
• Upload company-related photos—you, other executives on your team, your building, your products, screenshots (if there is any software component to your product), your logo, etc.—to photo-sharing sites like Flickr.
• Start Twittering. Use your real name in your profile.
• Create accounts on social bookmarking sites like Wikio, Mixx, Digg and/or StumbleUpon. Any time there is an online news story or blog post published about your company or product, submit it. Also submit other items that may be of interest to your customers and prospects.
• Hire a social media-savvy PR person to help you get interviewed by prominent bloggers and writers in your industry.

• Consider writing a Wikipedia page about yourself. Keep in mind, however, that you have to be considered a public figure (or at least be able to make the argument that you should be) or the Wikipedia cabal will reject the article and take it down. That means you’ll need to have links to third-party sources who have written about you, and the, er, idiosyncratic folks at Wikipedia will have to agree. For example, Tim Young the relief pitcher for the Expos and Red Sox has a Wikipedia page, but Tim Young, CEO of on-demand social networking platform Socialcast doesn’t.
• Create and maintain profile pages on social networking and directory sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Jigsaw, Plaxo, ZoomInfo, CrunchBase (for technology executives), and VisualCV.

Professional corporate “evangelists” like Scott Monty and Christopher Barger, not surprisingly, tend to show up pretty well on search. But shouldn’t the CEO—particularly at smaller firms—be one of a company’s biggest evangelists? Stakeholders may very well think so. As a top executive, you are a public figure, and people will search for your name on the web. Online reputation management gives you at least some control over what they’ll find.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Here is the original post:
Don’t They Know Who You Are? Why Reputation Management is Critical

Socialcast on Tuesday is launching a revision of its group communication service. Originally released in 2007, Tuesday’s update has a much cleaner and more contemporary interface, and liberally borrows features and ideas from social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed.

I was very impressed by the demo I got last week. Socialcast appears to have a solid, lightweight product for business communication that could help workers (along with customers and clients) keep up to date with each other, and could also reduce in-company e-mail spam.

The underlying principle of Socialcast is that users enter their status messages, questions, or ideas into a simple text box. Users can also link their accounts to other services, such as Delicious, or to RSS feeds and blogs. People who subscribe to those users can see those updates and can respond to them privately or in public.

As on Friendfeed, items that are discussed a lot stay on the top of the stack of items.

Sound familiar?

Socialcast is like Friendfeed, but with a business slant.

What makes Socialcast a business product more so than Friendfeed, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Jaiku, or what have you, is that it offers administrative controls appropriate for a workgroup app. Admins can hook the system into an enterprise directory service, and can make sure new people joining a workgroup are automatically subscribed to others in their company who matter to them.

The system also has different default item types than a general-purpose nanoblog or personal feed aggregator. You can enter your status, as you can with other services, or put items in the categories “ideas,” “questions,” “links,” and “worklog.” The last is especially useful to keep tabs on who’s doing what.

Socialcast will also let enterprise customers “white label” the product so it carries corporate branding, and there will be capabilities to include company-specific posting types linked to an internal system. For example, when signing a new customer, the service could link to a Salesforce.com record and pull information from it. Links to wikis and bug-tracking systems are also possible.

I believe this tool could do several good things for a company. Most importantly, it connects its users to the pulse of what’s happening in a company or workgroup, and still gives them the control to dial back on the onslaught of information if they wish, by un-following certain users.

It can also help capture business knowledge in a central location. And it can greatly reduce corporate spam.

I do have some reservations, though. There’s no client app for the service yet, for example, although I’m told an AIR app is forthcoming. I find that using a desktop app, Twhirl, to access Friendfeed and Twitter makes using the services much easier, and for Socialcast to really work, a persistent desktop experience (like on an e-mail app) will make a big difference.

The new small-business version of the application will cost $5 a month per user (after 30-day free trial). It’s a fair price, but there are no tiers of service (flat rates for groups of users), and I worry that businesses may be stingy with subscriptions and not sign up for as many user accounts as they could use. This pricing plan might also make it harder for end users to sign up people for their service who aren’t in the company proper–customers and clients, for example.

And speaking of external users, I’m not sure how the product manages security, so some feeds stay closed off to non-company users.

For Socialcast to add value to a company, it has to be used. Fortunately, it appears to be easy, even fun, to get into and use the app. I would be delighted to see CNET adopt the product. I think it could help us, and most other businesses too.

See also: Jive Clearspace, SelectMinds, Igloo, Socialtext.

View original post here:
Socialcast is Friendfeed for your business

Tim Young (TY): You’re correct. Socialcast is focused on using social dynamics to solve organization’s internal information problems. The Socialcast application is a customizable internal corporate social network designed to allow the employees within a company to share information, ask questions, get answers, and engage more deeply in their daily work. It’s a secure, private site that can either complement or replace a traditional intranet depending on the needs of the company. Our tool focuses on capturing the tacit knowledge held by multiple generations and geographically dispersed employees, resulting in a knowledge-sharing and collaboration portal that unites the minds of a company’s entire workforce.

WMC: For many enterprises, employee knowledge is spread across documents, databases, emails and other systems. A common approach to addressing this is through enterprise search. How does Socialcast integrate with enterprise search platforms, such as Microsoft FAST, Attivio or Endeca?

TY: Currently we offer a robust search interface from within the Socialcast application but we recognize the need to interoperate with organizations existing search products and platforms. We are currently in process of working with a number of enterprise search providers to connect our Socialcast API into their search products. We hope to make some exciting announcements around this effort during the fourth quarter of this year.

WMC: Who do you see as the primary competition for Socialcast?

TY: Socialcast is a unique application that blends a traditional consumer social networking layer with KM tools to capture and share tacit knowledge. This unique approach allows Socialcast to solve specific information challenges that companies are currently facing included knowledge retention and socialization. Many large enterprise vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle) are beginning to add “social” features to their existing product suites but they are merely feature add-ons and not the core of a product. There are also a number of smaller enterprise vendors that are bringing social software to the enterprise but like Socialcast each has a unique focus and approach; Socialtext with wikis, ConnectBeam with social bookmarking, SelectMinds with alumni focused networks.

WMC: Anything else people should know about Socialcast?

TY: Socialcast brings a unique and effective approach to social networking and messaging in the enterprise that was born from building highly successful consumer social networks. At our core Socialcast has always been focused on making product decisions based on extensive research and data mining. Our product development is heavily customer and end user centric in its approach and methods. We invest heavily in research and development to bring impactful and meaningful product innovations to the market. Currently we are engaged in research in network science, collective intelligence, flock theory, emergence behaviors, and conversation theory.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read the original:
WMC Interviews: Tim Young of Socialcast