WE HAVE LIFTOFF

This post officially launches our first research report on the 19* applications vying to bring Twitteresque networking and communications inside the enterprise.

Download the .pdf here or use Scribd to view, embed, share or download. You are welcome to share it freely within your organization and networks.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison 11032008

Read All About Them (coverage of each application, from all around the web)

This post is an (evolving) index to blog and media coverage of the applications profiled in the report. It’s striking how much more coverage some applications have received, and while we’re not sure that’s a reliable mark of their suitability for the role, it’s certainly a marketing advantage.

What We Did
We compiled 19 criteria and basic information from 19 applications. Our work combines survey results, independent web research, verification of new features and analysis of how the 19 applications relate to one another and the marketplace.

We did not yet fully demo each application and we’re not choosing favorites in this preliminary comparison. We do mention observed advantages and reservations, and suggest six categories to distinguish between the applications.

We’ll cover much more on the rationale for enterprise microsharing, use cases, case studies, trends and future speculation in future research, on the TouchBase Blog, in speaking engagements and in client work. For the time being, I’ve compiled an Enterprise Reading List which ran as a post last night and has a permanent home under the Microsharing menu, above.

Have Your Say
Please ask questions, discuss the report and suggest future criteria and research topics in the comments here.

APPLICATIONS ON PARADE
Nevermind what we think, what have the pundits said?

Pure-Play Microsharing

Twitter
So much has been written about Twitter, Let Google be your guide.

Present.ly
Webware review, CNET by Rafe Needleman
Present.ly Takes On TC50 Winner Yammer, TechCrunch by Don Reisinger
Present.ly packs a solid punch against Yammer, ZDNet By Jennifer Leggio
Is Yammer Bad for Business? Robert Richardson

Communote
Enterprise Microblogging Ein Neuer Hype? by Dirk Roehrborn
Communote Presentations on Slideshare
Microblogging for the Enterprise, SocialMediaCamp, London

Trillr
Trillr Usage Inside Coremedia

Iron Feed (nothing available)

Enterprise Microsharing

ESME
ESME Enterprise Social Messaging Within an Enterprise SOA Framework, ZDNet by Oliver Marks
ESME: Is This What an Enterprise Twitter Could Look Like?, ReadWriteWeb by Marshall Kirkpatrick
ESME Enterprise Microblogging and Real World Business Problems, by Dennis Howlett
Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment by Anne K Petterøe

BlueTwit

Big Blue Embraces Social Media, BusinessWeek by Stephen Baker
Social Networking: The Twitterverse Debates
Porting Twitter Script for Ubiquity to BlueTwit
Twitter Behind the Firewall (Photos on Flickr)

OraTweet

OraTweet: Tweeting in the Enterprise
OraTweet Bot, an XMPP/Jabber Listener for Twitter
Social Observations, OraTweet Edition
On OraTweet and Open Social
OraTweet, Oracle’s Enterprise Microsharing Application, TouchBase Blog by Laura Fitton

Open Source Microsharing

Identica
Taking on Twitter With Open Source Software Daniel Terdiman, CNET
Twhirl Gets Pushy with Identica, CNET Webware by Rafe Needleman
Cooking With Linux: Warp Speed Blogging Marcel Gagne, LinuxJournal
Open Source Microblogging May Become Twitter Fallback, Ars Technica
Identica Federated Twitter, ReadWriteWeb
Identica is More About What Comes Next, by Chris Brogan
The Problem with Identica is…, TechCrunch

Jisko
Jisko the Open Source Microblogging Application
Jisko: Competition for Identica?
Jisko: Twitter Clone

Yonkly
Major Update to Yonkly: Widgets, Ads & More
Yonkly Groups and new Look
Backup Your Twitter Messages @ Yonkly

OpenMicroBlogger
OpenMicroBlogger Monetizes with Opening of App Store

Psuedo Microsharing

Prologue

Twitter - Public Timeline = Prologue, Mashable by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins
Prologue Theme for Wordpress: is it a Twitter Killer?
Part Twitter, Part Basecamp, All Business, VentureBeat

Status (Status Blog is The What)

Integrated Microsharing

Socialtext Signals
Socialtext 3.0: Will Wikis Finally Find Their Place in Business?, BusinessWeek By Rob Hof
SocialText 3.0 blends Facebook, Twitter, and the Enterprise, TechCrunch by By Steve Gillmor
Exclusive video: SocialText brings enterprise Facebook and Twitter to wikis by Robert Scoble
Socialtext co-founder: Enterprise Twitter isn’t enough By Rafe Needleman
Socialtext Signals Marks Wiki Provider’s Entry into Enterprise Microblogging By Clint Boulton
Socialtext enters Twitter for the enterprise sweepstakes By Larry Dignan

Socialcast
Socialcast is FriendFeed for your business, CNET Webware by Rafe Needleman
USA Today (Quotes client Hot Topic)
Intranet Journal: Socialcast Harnesses Power of Online Conversations
NASA Case Study Presentation from KM World
A Social Function, Business Trends Quarterly Magazine by Analyst Jon Arnold

HeadMix
Best Buy’s Enterprise Twitter, ReadWriteWeb by Laura Fitton

Self-Serve Microsharing

Yammer
Yammer Launches at TC50: Twitter for Companies, TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld
Yammer, a Twitter for the Enterprise, CNET by Rafe Needleman
Hmmmm Yammer, by Daniel Siddle
Mahalo on Yammer
Yammer TechCrunch50 Profile
TechCrunch50: 10 to Watch

QikCom
QikCom Adds Its Own Twist To Enterprise Twitter
Five Questions With: QikCom
Mahalo on QikCom
Competition Heats Up in the Enterprise Twitter Market

*And then there were 20. Not getting off easy, nope. In a perfect illustration of how dynamic this segment is right now, we noticed Iridesco’s Coop just as our research went to press, but were unable to get in touch with their team over the weekend to administer the survey. More to come on that soon.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Enterprise Twitter heats up with Present.ly
• Enterprise Microsharing Reading List
• Weekly Wrapup, 15-19 September 2008
• Company communication improvement: Yammer and Present.ly

Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison

Directly download the .pdf: Enterprise Microsharing Report

…or use the options below to view it online, embed it on your blog or email a copy. And please feel free to contact us about microsharing at your company. For use cases and more information, try this enterprise microsharing resource list.

1. Read it online using Issuu

OR

2. View, embed or download the document from Scribd:
Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison 11032008

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OR:

3. View and download the updated Comparison Matrix only at Scribd

View the Scribd matrix document full screen
Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools

Future in-depth research will include detailed reviews, market assessment, screenshots and case studies where available. At every stage we will provide free summaries, single-purchase reports and the option of subscribing to current ongoing analysis. We will also be rolling out additional research products including case studies, recommended best practices and interviews with CTOs, CIOs and other technology professionals in the space.

Almost all Pistachio research includes free, publicly shared information and insights. The exception is privately funded research which will only be publicly released with the express permission of our research clients.

We’d love to talk to you about microsharing at your company.

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague, Joe Cascio, and I did a guest post on Mashable.com called “Is the Enterprise Ready for Microblogging Tools Like Twitter?” I would encourage you to take a few minutes to read the post but in the event that you just want the Cliff Notes version (remember those?) here’s an outline.

WHAT WE COVERED
The post focused on three basic areas:

Business Value - essentially, the “why would businesses want to use a microblogging tool like Twitter for internal conversations. The six areas we called out were:

1. an emergency broadcast system
2. for knowledge management
3. internal training
4. expert identification
5. seeing who the “connectors” were and
6. better connecting to external stakeholders.

Key Considerations - in other words, what would some of the demands be that companies put on vendors that provided microblogging tools for the enterprise. This included considerations like:

1. Single Sign-On
2. reliability
3. analytics
4. security
5. scalability
6. groups functionality
7. distribution and
8. interoperability

Current Players - in this section, Joe and I mentioned a few of the obvious players in the enterprise microblogging space like Yammer, Laconi.ca and Utterli. We went on to acknowledge the fact that many of the white label community providers like Jive, Awareness, Mzinga (the company I work for) along with open source software like Drupal would soon be in the microblogging game.

READER RESPONSE
Not surprisingly, the “enterprise microblogging” post received a fair amount of attention due to the all the press the best known consumer microblogging tool/site, Twitter, is receiving in the press these days. What was most fascinating and the impetus for this subsequent post was the conversation that took place in the comments.

For one, a number of other enterprise microblogging application providers chimed in about the fact that they too were in the game. Most notable was A-lister, Dennis Howlett (also a contributor to this blog) who is doing some work for SAP’s microblogging project called ESME…

ESME has all these capabilities - and more. (Disclosure: I”m part of the ESME team)

Serendipitously, the owner of the TouchBase Blog (and one of the pioneers in the microblogging for business space), Laura Fitton had posted on Mashable just a few days before with a matrix comparing a number of other players in this space. While we didn’t get a chance to include a link to Laura’s post, I did make a point of including a link in the comments.

Equally timely was the announcement earlier that day that SocialText had jumped into the enterprise microblogging game. Commenter, Justin Kistner…

Just in time for your post, Socialtext announced Signals, which makes microblogging ready for the Enterprise, and not the other way around. Disclosure: SocialText is my client.

So what is the key take away from our original post? Well, we confirmed the fact that people are interested in enterprise microblogging. We also confirmed that there are going to be a whole lot more players in the space before all is said and done. That’s one of the reasons that Laura has asked Joe and me (notice I didn’t opt to speak “Palin-ese” and say “me and Joe”) to guest post on this blog from time to time.

What other key considerations need to be discussed regarding microblogging in the enterprise? For one, we could sure use some case studies. If you’ve got them, we’d love to hear about them.

Aaron Strout is Vice President of Social Media at Mzinga, where he focuses on creating business value through viral marketing channels, including blogs, podcasts, twitter, and webinars.

Pistachio Consulting is putting the finishing touches on our report “Enterprise Microsharing Tools Compared: Sixteen Applications Your Business Can Profit From” which will soon be available for free download on our site. You can also register to have it emailed to you when published.

Read related stories on the TouchBase Blog

Yesterday in rolling out Socialtext 3.0, there was a small (but much echoed) mention of their coming enterprise microsharing application Socialtext Signals. In our Mashable post last week, Signals was the 15th “unannounced” enterprise microsharing service. I got a sneak peek at Signals in July during Brainstorm Tech and have looked forward to more.

This is not “just another” enterprise Twitter clone. In addition to a look at what’s new and different about Socialtext Signals, this post (it’s the nature of such an emergent space) also includes a fair amount on what we believe enterprise microsharing can become.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee points out:

Most folks are likely to call it “Twitter for the Enterprise” but we are thinking about it much more deeply - particularly how integrating it with People, Dashboard, and Workspace will help make it much more of a tool that blends with the flow of real work, and not just another cool social app.

Socialtext Signals is just briefly mentioned in the official release and remains in private beta. Co-Founder Ross Mayfield’s blog post provides the most detail on Signals. Choice quotes “get answers without interrupting people” and “Socialtext Signals is social messaging for the enterprise connected with context” sum it up nicely.

What you say and what you do
Socialtext Signals tracks what people are saying and sharing and Socialtext combines that with what people are doing and working on. Capturing pulses of relevant work activity, not just what people think to post, makes this a more integrated work tool.

Using it internally we’ve learned how different usage is from Twitter… because it is in the context of a company. The social patterns of what people say and share has taught us a lot about potential use cases. …Socialtext Signals will provide an integrated user experience across Socialtext Workspace, Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People.

They observed improved signal-to-noise ratio - and less risk valuable information will be lost in one missed signal -because multiple actions can be expressed in one signal, and because ensuing conversation around important points amplifies those signals.

Microsharing with Context
Because signals are linked to profiles and to collaboration within the Socialtext 3.0 workspace, they start from a rich contextual baseline. Context can also be explicitly shared in the content of the signal or the link included. Activity in the system generates a feed that’s part of the microsharing environment.

Context and being a part of the fabric of people’s work increase microsharing’s value and make it more genuinely the connective tissue we envision between individuals and teams.

Get answers without interrupting people
He recaps how Twitter is a surprisingly effective and efficient way to find answers, information, people and solutions, and frames Signals’ value in similar terms.

You are tapping into the collective intelligence of participants. Rapidly. And without the costs associated with other communication mediums for asking people questions. This is because the constraints of microblogging actually support efficient communications:

• Messaging is in near real time
• Messages are kept to 140 characters, the length of an SMS message, which encourages brevity, summary and linking
• While you can view all messages, you follow people to create a custom feed of the signals from the people you want, leveraging the social network as a filter
• In most use cases, Signals is implemented as a “Reply-Optional” medium
• @Reply conventions reveal when a message is directed to you in public, while letting others add value or benefit from the conversation

“The broader values include speed of communication, knowledge sharing, context sharing and collective intelligence.” This value - problem solving with fewer interruptions and more reach into networks of loose ties - will be even greater for “process-specific solutions.”

BLOG COVERAGE
Larry Dignan’s writeup for ZDNet echoes the importance of context, which “could be what separates Signals from efforts like Yammer and Present.ly.” But reserves judgment on market readiness:

That doesn’t mean micromessaging isn’t important. In fact, it could be a big deal inside a business. But it could also be a mere feature to be integrated later by the likes of Oracle and SAP. Is Socialtext a groundbreaking, but way too early company in your enterprise?

Rafe Needleman’s CNET Webware reviews of enterprise microsharing apps (Yammer, Present.ly, Socialcast) his Socialtext signals writeup does not disappoint:

…just giving users a Twitter clone doesn’t solve the dual problems of information overload on the one hand, and personal isolation at work on the other. He believes that the most important communication between workers in a company is what they are doing. “When I work,” Mayfield says, “I’m sharing knowledge as a byproduct of getting work done. In the enterprise, what someone does is more important than what they say.”

Clint Boulton spends most of his Socialtext 3.0 column writing about Signals as opposed to the launched suite. He quotes Mayfield:

“The conversations on Signals are very different than what you would find in a more public Twitter. It’s different because it’s within the context of an existing organization trying to get things done. Twittering without context is just frittering your time away.”

“When I work, I’m sharing knowledge as a byproduct of getting work done. In the enterprise, what someone does is more important than what they say.”

And he nicely sums up Socialtext Signals’ market position:

I’m glad to see a contemporary groupware company like Socialtext taking the longer view of the Twitter concept than upstarts like Yammer and Present.ly. In this space, I’ve been a fan of Socialcast more than those apps, because it’s based on the larger vision of integrating information from numerous group applications. That’s what Socialtext is doing, too, and it’s the right thing for business.

Dennis Howlett, writing at ZDNet, is deeply involved with conversations about enterprise microsharing in general and is personally involved with ESME. He had some good responses to Larry Dignan’s piece, and makes a bold statement “I believe this is one of the most important additions that company has made in its evolving enterprise 2.0 platform.” He also restates an anecdote that one-time Gartner analyst Erik Zeller predicted that “supply chain problems could be solved through some form of instant messaging.”

Steve Gillmor, writing at TechCrunch, added the context of interoperability:

The forthcoming Signals API will support the Twitter API, making it easy for IT to leverage the broad pool of third party micromessaging clients such as Twhirl and compatible tools from loosely federated Laconica-compatible servers. Social Signals goes beyond the current Twitter architecture with channels, essentially groups that can be managed via workspace creation and deployment.

Robert Scoble has a detailed roundup of many more of the blog reactions and an 18 minute cellphone video conversation with Mayfield.

Mayfield: “Standalone Twitter clones are very different from what we are looking to achieve here.”

Rafe Needleman/CNET’s Webware review of Present.ly finds several advantages over Yammer for enterprise microsharing. Present.ly:

• supports file attachments
• permits groups
• does not require all users to share an email domain
• can be installed behind the firewall
• supports the Twitter API

Twitter API support is significant. Many tools that work with Twitter would be very useful to have for an internal version.

Rafe dislikes the email domain requirement for Yammer: “it makes it impossible to invite an outside contractor into a work group.” That’s easily solved by issuing an alias from your company’s email domain. Possibly more of a problem is that many companies have divergent sets of email domains (by brand, by business unit, or with different TLDs such as .com vs. .co.uk).

On the other hand, the ad-hoc, sign-yourself-up nature of Yammer fosters spontaneous adoption and use of the tool, which may later help employees “sell the concept” of microsharing and demonstrate microsharing’s value to decisionmakers. On the other hand, it may piss off IT departments enough to inhibit subscription growth.

Keep an eye on the TouchBase blog for our side-by-side comparison of all publicly announced enterprise microsharing tools.

(Via Chris Brogan.)

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by Chris Brogan. This post originally appeared at www.ChrisBrogan.com

Reading this news that Loic LeMeur sent me this morning, I see that Twhirl, the social software front end client, now supports any laconi.ca install. If you’re not yet up on laconi.ca , it’s an open source, run it on your own servers version of Twitter. See the flagship install of it at identi.ca.

Twhirl integrates private Laconi.ca instances

So, to sum that all up: Twitter inside the firewall, private for your business is Twhirl+laconi.ca. Twitter outside the firewall with your business colleagues and friends is Twhirl+Twitter. Easy cheesy. One app.

Recently announced at TechCrunch50, Yammer is angling to be the Twitter for the enterprise client. Believe me, lots of companies have asked for this very thing. And while I don’t want to take away from the technical qualities of why Yammer is cool, and why it might well do the trick just fine for businesses, I’m thinking that what Loic LeMeur and the Twhirl team just did kind of trumps Yammer. Why?

Single client.

Logged into my Twhirl account, I can have a tab for Twitter, a tab for FriendFeed, and a tab for my laconi.ca install of choice. That means I can have a behind-the-firewall and a lets-share-with-everyone install all in one client.

This is pretty darned clever, Loic.

I’m digging into it further now, but I think I’ve just found a great recommendation for a dual-use Twitter-like environment thanks to this bridging strategy by Twhirl.

What do you think? Am I wrong?

Editor’s note: our enterprise contacts, and much of the discourse around Yammer agree that most companies will want “inside the firewall” control of microblogging applications, which may not bode well for Yammer and other “software as a service” applications that keep the messages and data “in the cloud.” That said, plenty of important applications that these companies use are running on offsite servers. Our guess is that different companies will adopt different models.

Certainly Yammer’s “help yourself” enterprise 2.0-via-porosity model is an interesting one that could compel companies to move more quickly on adopting microsharing within the enterprise.

Meanwhile, we are putting together a research briefing on the current spate of enterprise microsharing applications. To provide information on your company’s solution or for a copy of that research as it is ready, please contact us: info (at) pistachioconsulting (dot) com.

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