Web Worker Daily

Corporate social networking company Socialtext adds to its product lineup today. Building on the theories of collaboration and networking that Socialtext founder Ross Mayfield and I discussed previously, the new additions are intended to improve collaboration and teamwork by binding the “loose ties” in an organization more closely into the network. The two new apps, which are likely to be particularly interesting for web workers in distributed teams, are: Signals, a microblogging and messaging platform; and Desktop, an Adobe Air desktop client.

Both of these new products are tightly integrated into the Socialtext suite and not something you can use apart from the other tools: Workspace, essentially wiki and blog capabilities; People, for social networking within organizations; and Dashboard, where you can customize what Socialtext activity you see.

New app Signals is a Twitter-like messaging system for work-related status updates, which are added to your Socialtext profile. Saying what you are working on, and sharing that with others, can help bring more context to the conversations and relationships you have with distributed team members. Much like Twitter, you decide which coworkers you would like to follow. As well as reporting their status updates, Signals also monitors other “signals” from the coworkers you are following, such as updates they make to a wiki or a blog, helping you keep tabs on what they are doing. Signals resides on your Socialtext Dashboard as a widget. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently spoke with Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, about his product – an enterprise-level group collaboration platform – and he shared some theories of collaboration that led to the development of the software.

He spoke about the construction of a social network and how our networks have dense cores (strong ties) surrounded by dynamic peripheries (looser ties).

The core of an organization – such as the leadership team – tends to work closely together. They process information well and can usually make decisions quickly and effectively. The rest of the team, however, is the dynamic periphery and there is strength in these weak ties.

Traditional groupware serves the dense core, says Mayfield, never connecting to the weak ties. However, tapping into the periphery – the distributed team – can accelerate a project and a process cycle. Socialtext is meant to save the time individuals spend seeking information or the right people with the information or skills they need to get a job done.

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