Socialtext 3.0

Last night we had Alan Lepofsky, the Director of Marketing for SocialText, introduce us to the new SocialText 3.0 platform.  I thought I would reflect on some observations from that visit, and invite others in the class to comment as well.

Some thoughts:

1) I thought it was interesting the degree of functionality with which Alan was using the ST 3.0 platform compared to how we are using it in class.  Web 2.0 tools are part technolology and part social process.  I think ST has the technology part down reasonably well, but it’s transferring the processes that is more challenging.  I consider myself a relatively strong user of the platform, but I wasn’t aware of much of the functionality or ways it can be used.  So, if I have difficulty using it, 1) how are other companies learning of the new features and potential processes and 2) how can managers communicate these new processes to their employees.  I like the flexibility ST offers, but flexibility also comes with additional work.

2) Speaking of flexibility, I am somewhat underwhelmed with the ST people module, at least so far.   Three points here.

a) I am surprised that people don’t have more flexibility about their profile.  For instance, there are pre-designated fields for supervisor and assistant.  I have more than one assistant.  What do I do then?  I am surprised that a Wiki company has developed such a rigid approach to profiles.  Why not give people a Wiki area to create their own profiles.

b) I am also disappointed the user pages don’t provide more history about each user.  Do I really care about the last 20 edits someone made, or do I want to know their usage history across many months, what pages they are editing most, etc.  I can certainly envision business uses for this data, especially in a large company, and I am surprised ST doesn’t provide this functionality.

c) Lastly, I am surprised that ST still doesn’t support any type of messaging or commenting between users.  ST signals is nice, but there may be times when I want to raise an issue with a partiuclar user that may not relate directly to any particular wikipage.  If they are really looking to become a social networking tool, they need to let people communicate with one another.

Those gripes aside, I do think they are moving in the right direction with the platform.  I think there is great potential in where they hope to go.  What do you think about the ST platform and their plans for the future?