Why in the world are we paying for Social Text? « DC’s Blog

Why in the world are we paying for Social Text? « DC’s Blog

There’s a good string of comments here.  Mine is as follows:

I both agree and disagree with Alan here.  Disagree in the sense that I think some “free” sites are competition – namely, Google.  Many companies have precisely moved away from enterprise level email hosting, and routing their corporate email through Gmail.  I think there is a real danger here that Google sites (Google’s free wiki platform) could morph into a similar competitor.

On the other hand, my experience with SocialText is that they tend to be fairly proactive in platform development.  Just as I wish that ST had a feature, it’s not long before it appears (of course, I’ve been asking for the ability to “rate” pages for years now to no avail).  I also agree that ST is a very “user friendly” experience.  They do a good job at hand-holding, which is required for the short term adoption of these tools.  If ST continues to hand hold and use those opportunities to respond to customer concerns by adding new features, then they could stay one step ahead of the Googles of the world.

It might never become a $50B company, but by pushing the envelope on group collaboration they can might find a good niche that they can ride for many years.  We’ll see.

What they really need to do is hire me as a consultant to go into companies and give my dog and pony show on group collaboration.  Maybe if they reach their first billion.

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?

Socialtext – more than a facelift

Tech Joy

I’ve seen both Claire and Joy discuss the so-called “facelift” that has happened in our socialtext platform that we use for class.  I have been interested in this discussion, mainly for the implications that the conversation suggests.

My first response is that these changes are far more than just a “facelift.”  It represents a fundamental redesign (or at least powerful new functionality) to the way Socialtext operates.  “But wait” I hear you saying, I don’t see any fancy new technology…it works the same but just looks different.  Well, yes and no.

I have been very excited about the potential of the new ST 3.0 platform, and I have been following release notes closely.  A year ago I met with ST developers and told them that I thought this was the direction the platform should go (only to find out that their CEO had expressed the same sentiment two weeks earlier…great minds may think alike but this mind gets paid alot less!)

So, I went to try out this new functionality, and use this as a teachable moment for Joy and Claire to not judge a book by its cover, only to find out that the new features were not yet turned on.  Why on earth would ST do this?  These cool new toys and I have to ask for permission to play with them.

After further thought, however, it makes alot of sense.  We’ve been talking in class lately about computing as a service.  Companies who offer software as a service have to contend with an issue that I had not previously considered – upgrading the software without the user’s permission or knowledge.  It would have been a rude awakening not to just have ST look different but act different without any real advance warning.  So, their approach was to make the tools available if we want them.  Prety smart, if you ask me.

I’m tentatively planning on having ST’s director of marketing in class sometime over the next few weeks to discuss the changes.  I’ll give you a heads up so we can all be ready to explore the new functionality and decide (as a class) if we want to adopt it.  Could be interesting for us all.