It’s a simple test, Young said, but it was also one that all employees could easily participate in. The resulting data points could be used to not only rate an individual employee’s satisfaction with his or her job, but also to help promote cohesion between team members and identify if certain groups or employees, such as graphic designers or salespeople, were becoming disenfranchised.

VMWare recently acquired Socialcast, making Young VP of Social Enterprise. Despite the sophistication of its virtualization software implementations, Young said it has kept Socialcast true to its principles of providing simple business solutions can cut through the normally high level of complexity at an enterprise.

“We’re not really building software here,” Young said. “We’re helping people to unleash their power internally, become heroes and become more affective at their jobs. If we can provide really simple tools — not complex tools inside the workplace that they have to spend a lot of time training on and learning, trying to figure out how they drive value for their own jobs — if we give them really simple tools, they can use them to flourish.”

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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• Personal tools lead to practical business
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Social Media in the Enterprise

In order to keep company data secure, enterprise social networking tools like Socialcast usually only allow people from within a company to join that organization’s social graph  — a restriction that is usually based on email domain. This makes social business tools useful for discussion and collaboration within a particular organization, but means that whenever users want to interact with people from outside of the organization, they have to use a separate tool, like email. Some social business tools, such as Moxie Software’s Spaces, do offer facilities for bringing external users into discussions, but they are usually focused on specific groups of people (customers or contractors for example). Socialcast’s new features are much more flexible, allowing users to invite external participation from anyone, but still allow the company to maintain control over data privacy.

Bringing external users into Socialcast is pretty straightforward; a user simply has to create a new group and check a box to make it “External facing.” External users invited into that group will log in and use Socialcast in exactly the same way as employees, with just the same capabilities as regular users (posting updates, commenting, uploading and downloading files, etc.) However, they only have access to that group and cannot see anything else, even the search box is eliminated, as shown in the screenshot to the right. Internal users (employees) accessing the group will see a prominent warning that the group is external facing and anything they post could be seen by external contributors.

In addition to the ability to bring external contributors into groups, Socialcast is also getting two other enterprise-friendly features:

• User Roles. Community administrators, or IT within large enterprises, can now create permission-based access to Socialcast’s premium features, reducing the burden on IT and community administrators.
• Org Charts. Automatically mapped org charts make it easier for people to understand “Who’s Who” in the company and their social interactions without having to leave the Socialcast community. External contributors will also be included in these charts.

I think opening up Socialcast to external contributors is a welcome move that’s likely to be followed by other social business vendors. Companies are not islands: they work within much larger interconnected networks of vendors, partners and clients. Having two separate silos of information for communication and collaboration — a social business tool and email, for example — is tricky to manage for both users and management; the way that most social business tools can only be used within an organization was one one of the reasons that I suggested that Google+ might find a home in the enterprise. Opening up Socialcast to external contributions should help to resolve that issue, while allowing businesses to maintain much more control over their information than is possible with a consumer tool like Google+. Archiving external conversations in a social business tool like Socialcast makes a lot of sense, too: if a particular user leaves a company, the business has an archive of their conversations and relationships with external suppliers, which makes it much easier for their replacement to hit the ground running. I spoke with Tim Young, Socialcast’s founder and CEO, who said that a select group of companies that have had 45 days’ worth of early access to the new version of the app in beta have seen a whopping 40 percent increase in usage, so it seems that businesses will readily embrace these kinds of features.

The new features are rolling out Tuesday. There’s no per-user charge for external contributors, so companies can add as many as they like.

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• Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum

Flowr’s home screen looks very Twitter-like. But in addition to status updates, users can create several other types of posts, including ideas, questions, events, to-do list items, and polls. Flowr also allows posting of larger documents (complete with links and images) that can be edited, wiki-style, by anyone who the original poster gives access to. One can mention others using the Twitter-style @ syntax, and files and tags can be attached to each type of post.

Each of the above post types can be shown in one main screen, called “My Flow,” or can be viewed by category, so that, for example, all of the to-dos can be viewed together.

Flowr also includes groups, which are rather like a cross between a private BBS and LinkedIn’s Groups. Users can create and join groups related to specific topics. Group discussions can be public or private (invitation-only).

Flowr’s people directory links to user-editable profiles that show contact information. The directory is searchable by such fields as expertise and language skills, which I can see will be very useful in larger organizations. As in Twitter, one can follow the posts of selected users.

Flowr has several tools that allow it to integrate with your workflow, including an iPhone app, a bookmarklet for saving and sharing web content, and a system for posting via email (like Posterous). Updates from Flowr can be shown on the desktop via the Yip extension for Firefox. Interestingly, though, Flowr doesn’t include an instant messaging function.

In addition, Flowr is planning integration with Google Apps, which is scheduled to become available next week. And Flowr has an API so that developers can create custom applications using the app.

The free version of Flowr supports up to 10 users and two groups. Flowr is currently rolling out a premium version with unlimited groups, custom themes and analytics, that will be priced on a per-user basis.

Flowr isn’t Basecamp-style project management, but it may be just the thing for organizations whose members like to interact via social networks.

Have you tried Flowr?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

As with classic email lists, Convos allows group members to send and reply to messages via email. But Convos has a larger feature set than standard email groups, including:

• A web interface where members can see and update what the group is working on. This password-protected, advertising-free web site includes panes to compose and display messages, upload files, manage tasks and schedules, and create and view on-screen pages. The interface has a custom URL like “group_name.convos.com” to which you can add your own logo.
• A system for creating and getting RSVPs for events.
• A system for posting comments and questions (which can be anonymous if desired).
• The ability to add subgroups, which could be useful for organizations with a committee structure.

But although Convos has a task module, it isn’t really a project management system: Its content is not organized by projects. If you need to manage projects, you’ll notice what Convos doesn’t have:

• The ability to group tasks together as part of larger milestones.
• The ability to assign tasks to specific members.
• Project management features, like Gantt charts.

Convos also doesn’t have any Twitter-like microblogging status updates. The Convos web interface looks a bit like a simplified version of Peago, which I recently reviewed. And it has many of the same limitations: It’s Flash-based, built in Flex and Silverlight, which means it’s not suited for corporate environments that limit Flash, or for mobile devices. Convos also shares with Peago a navigation structure that can be confusing; you can simplify the display by turning panes on and off, but the interface can get pretty crowded unless you’re using full-screen mode in a large monitor.

Convos has several pricing plans, ranging from a free version that allows five group members and 50MB of storage for files, to the $100 per month “Large” plan that allows 4GB of storage for unlimited members and subgroups.

Convos bills itself as “professional online groups.” If you need more than something like a Google Group can offer, and don’t mind the limitations of a Flash-based interface, then Convos may be for you. But if you need to manage projects, you’ll probably be better off with a full-featured project management system.

Have you used Convos? How do you communicate with groups?

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• Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

(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.

As Hutch Carpenter boldly states, in a piece called Microblogging Will Marginalize Corporate Email, “As more companies take up microblogging with services like Yammer, Socialcast, Present.ly and SocialText Signals, employee communications amongst employees will both increase and divert away from email.”

Carpenter then presents an equivalently bold image to illustrate how he believes microblogging can reduce the glut of email in the workplace.

Indeed, while I was at South by Southwest in Austin this past week, I heard people joke around to the effect of, “Wouldn’t it be nice if all emails had to be 140 characters or less?” Services like Yammer and Socialcast help to reduce the burden and overload that email brings to the workplace by providing the simple, flexible communication of microblogging with a number of specific work-related features.

While Twitter offers private accounts, services like Yammer and Present.ly impose a higher level of security by locking each network down to only those people who have an individual company email address.

The additional draw of these services in comparison to Twitter are features such as tagging, archiving, groups, attachments and mobile compatibility.

The combination of content aggregation features and microblogging features also offers a powerful way for groups and organizations to communicate and manage tasks and workflow. FriendFeed Rooms is a great example of this, as it allows RSS feeds, messages, links, images and video to be brought into a “room,” or group page (which may be private/invite only or public), with each new post creating the opportunity for a conversation thread. New activity in the room (new threads, posts, comments or “likes”) can be observed by seeing which thread appears at the top of the page.

FriendFeed Rooms has the power to be a game-changer in the microblogging space, creating an easy-to-use yet powerful communications platform for organizations and web workers while helping to reduce email overload. For example, the contributing writers for louisgray.com (of which I’m a member) use FriendFeed Rooms as a primary point of contact and communication.

ididwork is one of my favorite microblogging services, as it provides a sleek and streamlined approach to short real-time communication and archiving while also providing managers with a great task management feature set. Particularly for distributed work teams, ididwork can provide a basis for communication, information management, and work flow while drastically reducing the headache of wading through hundreds of e-mails each day. ididwork for employees is free while ididwork for managers costs $5 per month.

Are microblogging services reducing the number of your work-related emails?

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• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

Wouldn’t that sort of knowledge sharing and interaction help foster better communication within an organization as well? Socialcast thinks so and their hosted team messaging service is designed to do just that.

Socialcast has a history of building private social networks for the entertainment industry so this is familiar territory for them.  Their service allows companies to aggregate information and encourage communication and collaboration within their organization, much like we do externally with tools like Twitter or FriendFeed.

Each user is able to create a profile and share information, status updates, documents, links and more with their co-workers. The user profiles are completely customizable and can include custom questions as well as the ability for users to include links to other accounts like last.fm, Digg, LinkedIn or even their personal blogs. All of this can be controlled or limited in the administration panel to meet the needs of your particular deployment.

The ubiquitous status update is familiar to anyone already using Twitter or Facebook and it can even be set up so that a Twitter status is used within Socialcast.

The user profile seems like they would be a great way for people to get to know their colleagues and co-workers in a more personal way, and to reduce the anonymity that is frequent in large companies or those with disparate locations. In my corporate experience, the only way we could really see who worked where was to look through our GAL (Global Address List). This connecting of employees to the entire company even in remote or disconnected locations encourages a more collaborative team atmosphere.

Socialcast offers plugins for Gmail (Firefox only), Lotus Notes, Outlook, and a recently introduced iPhone app to make it easier for folks to participate using the tools that they are already comfortable with. Reducing the barrier to entry is key for maximum participation and since people can jump in without major changes to their existing workflow they are more likely to make a contribution.

Socialcast makes it easy for people to share ideas, ask questions, or solicit feedback.

In one customer study, they found that 93% of questions asked were answered successfully by folks in another location. This type of sharing of best practices creates a self updating knowledge base with useful information being more readily available.  Successful knowledge sharing like this is tremendous and really shows what a resource like this can contribute to a group.

The Socialcast folks say that they can meet Government regulations related to archiving and other compliance rules.

A concern I had with the deployment of a tool or service like this is that it could be used to quickly spread negative information or attitudes as well. I think with careful planning, and clear establishment of rules and usage guidelines issues could be avoided though.

While it can be used by teams of all sizes, the feature set seems to be designed for use in larger organizations. It’s possible to set up a structure within Socialcast that mirrors your internal structure and assign users to their appropriate groups. That said, I think it can also provide a lot of value for small groups as well.

The system is tremendously easy to use and I think once folks get past the “oh great, another system I need to use” feeling, it could be a tremendous asset in any size organization.  Again, the availability of tools like the Gmail plugin should help a lot in getting user traction.

Socialcast is free for the first five users and $1-5 monthly for each user after  based on your company size. Sign up is easy for self serve (up to 250 users) and Enterprise Solutions are also available.

Do you encourage messaging in your organization? What tools do you use?

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• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce