Web Worker Daily

Socialtext, an innovative enterprise social network/collaboration app that we’ve covered previously, has just launched Socialtext Mobile, which provides smartphone compatibility and lets you stay connected to your team even when you’re on the go.

The beta version of Socialtext Mobile supports iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. The site detects if you’re logging in with a mobile browser, and automatically directs you to Socialltext Mobile, which has a mobile-optimized interface but still lets you access all of Socialtext’s key functionality, including giving you full access to Socialtext Signals (Socialtext’s private microblogging tool), Activity Streams (keeping you up-to-date with what everyone’s doing), collaboration via Workspace pages, and — perhaps most importantly — access to your colleagues via People (which lets you look up colleagues’ contact details and connect with them while you’re on the go).

Socialtext Mobile comes free with Socialtext, the cost of which varies depending on your needs (a 30-day free trial is available). If you’d like to see a demo of Socialtext Mobile, check out the video.

Let us know what you think of Socialtext Mobile in the comments.

As more and more companies and teams are going strictly virtual, there are a whole new set of issues to consider and challenges to address. Using my own virtual social media marketing team as an example, I’ve identified a number of needs that require some kind of technology solution, but at the moment, we are “patchwork quilting” our tech infrastructure to accommodate all of our needs.

Here are some needs virtual teams face daily:

Here is a diagram of what we’re currently using as our solutions and which issues and needs each solution addresses. The software we currently use is in orange. Yellow designates the software we are considering.

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In an interesting business move, Socialtext (previously covered on WebWorkerDaily) today opened up its enterprise organizational collaboration software to smaller organizations with its new Free 50 offering for groups of up to 50 people. Previously, Socialtext did not have a freemium model (just a free trial), and instead offered its internal social networking, messaging and collaboration tools at a per-user price that put it out of the budgets of many smaller companies and groups. Now, with Free 50, virtual teams of web workers can sign up for a free version of the hosted SaaS.

What’s Included in Free 50

So what do we get for free? Most of the core features of Socialtext are offered as part of Free 50, including:

• the Facebook-like private social network.
• the customized home page dashboard.
• a collaborative workspace that blends wiki and blog functionality.
• Signals, the Twitter-like messaging system.
• Desktop, an Adobe Air desktop application that provides monitoring and access to Socialtext without having to constantly visit the Socialtext web site. ( I wrote about Signals and Desktop previously.) Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter’s meteoric rise in popularity – particularly over the last year – has been widely covered, and indeed the simplicity and flexibility of the 140 character-based microblogging platform continues to attract people all over the world in huge numbers, while a thriving community of developers build add-on services using its open API. We’ve also heard a lot about the power of Twitter as a communications, promotional and marketing tool.

(via TechCrunch)

Twitter and other microblogging services are radically shifting the ways in which people communicate and share information. And that shift is now entering the workplace on a large scale, particularly for web workers and for companies who are embracing the ways in which microblogging platforms can save time while increasing productivity.

Yammer, which plays off the already classic Twitter call to action, “What are you doing?” by asking, “What are you working on?” is an easy-to-use microblogging service that is tailored to the workplace and organizations in several important ways.

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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 »

Recently, I was speaking to another web-working type about his company’s name – which I really liked, by the way. The name included “Social” in it. He said he’s been hearing mixed things about the name.

“Someone told me that ’social’ is so over,” he said, lamenting that his company name may already be dated.

Is “Social” already over? That’s news to me. Those immersed in web work may be sick of the (over)use of the word “social,” particularly if, like me, they’ve been working in the social media space back before anyone called it “social.”

Back in 1995, we called it “community” and “communication.” Heck, we all became social online when we first realized we could communicate with others via our computers on traditional phone lines. Out on the speaking circuit, I talked about how the Internet was all about “connection – not just connecting us to information but also connecting us to people, to one another.”  Sure, we didn’t have the powerful sharing tools that we have today and social networks weren’t even a glimmer on the horizon. Does anyone remember Andrew Weinreich’s “failed” online community SixDegrees.com that paved the way for LinkedIn and the like? That was a social media before it was called social media.

So is “Social” just 2008’s buzzword and on its way out?

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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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