imran*

Category: Enterprise

  • WikiNotes

    Mark’s return to university – after six months working on TV3, our broadband social network for TV – has yielded some interesting application of social software technologies.

    SynchroeditIn his first week of lectures, Mark has been keeping a wiki of notes taken during his classes and lectures – this is a fantastic idea and I’m guessing will ultimately enable students to pool their individual notes, recollections and comments of a given lecture, in a single document…I always had problems getting complete sets of notes, from missing classes, appalling teachers or simply my terrible handwriting!

    With recent discussions I’ve been having around enterprise applications for social software, it strikes me that schools, colleges and universities are perhaps a ready market for enterprise social software…indeed, Foe is working on a variant of social bookmarking for schoolkids and teachers. Most universities offer some web hosting and an email address to students…perhaps its time to consider richer services that are an intrinsic part of collaborative learning and research – services in formats and media that most students will already be sensitised and acclimatised to.

    Extrapolating from Mark’s use of wikis for note taking, I can envisage a number of other applications:

    • WikiNotes – Real-time lecture wikis…perhaps using SynchroEdit.
    • Clipping tools to aggregates links, WikiNotes and other material into a del.icio.us-style environment.
    • Integrated blogging for encouraging conversational and collaborative discourse around learning materials.
    • Aggregators to enable students to ‘subscribe’ to teachers, classes and students.
    • Flickr-styled tagged images of diagrams, pictures and other graphics from classes.

    This appears to be a promising niche amongst the current generation of social software tools and actually an manifestation of the emerging Long Tail Of Software.

  • Social Enterprise?

    The recent announcement of Writely, a web-based word processor, underlines the increasing consumer-to-enterprise trajectory of social software innovations. Where historically, ‘groupware’ filtered down to consumer applications, the reverse is now true as consumer social software phenomena, including blogs, wikis, IM and social networks, begin to shape corporate information technology:

    • Jotspot
      Joe Kraus’ startup launched in 2004, offering wikis as applications to enterprise and SME customers. Jotspot wikis enable users to quickly assemble forms, databases, RSS feeds, web search and other applications simply using wiki metaphors and collaborative tools.
    • Futures Markets
      The principles underlying public futures markets, such as Celebdaq, HSX and the Iowa Electronic Markets, are being applied internally by large enterprises as they seek to harness the Wisdom Of Crowds in making business decisions and directing strategy.
    • 37signals
      Like Jotspot, 37 Signals’ Basecamp and Backpack tools are capitalising on the collaborative power of wikis and web-based applications, to offer low-cost, simple, yet powerful SME and enterprise solutions.
    • Writely
      Wikis, blogging and limited social networks, form the basis for a lightweight, yet feature-rich collaborative word processor and document version control service.
    • MoveableType
      With the proliferation of blogging over the last two years, technologies such as SixApart’s Moveable Type are enjoying widespread deployment within enterprises and SMEs as lightweight, extensible alternatives to prescriptive intranet, publishing and content management platforms.
    • Socialtext
      Socialtext provides enterprises with blog, wiki and IM driven intranet tools for collaboration, decision-making, project management and communication.
    • gOffice
      A recently released we-based office suite, consisting of a word processor, DTP engine, spreadsheet and presentation tool…the word processor utilises many wiki-based metaphors in its presentation.

    In addition, the enterprise potential of social networks and social filing systems, such as del.icio.us, remains untapped in the emerging generation of enterprise social software startups.

    The underlying infrastructure of these developments is based on openness – LAMP, RSS and REST coupled with large, vibrant development communities and a relatively low-barrier to acquiring expertise.

    This creating an infinitely re-mixable diversity of software that addresses the Long Tail of enterprise and SME niches – niches that that one-size-fits-all Oracle and Microsoft shaped solutions are unable to address due to the high cost of ‘partner solution’ consultancy.

    As startups such as 37signals and Jotspot begin to mature – the effect of social software in the enterprise will be interesting to observe, particularly as the giants in this space begin to respond through acquisition and competition.