Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Socialtext Releases Signals Micro-blogging Application for the Enterprise

Twitter-style Application Expands Socialtext's Enterprise Collaboration Platform with Secure Social Messaging Application -- Socialtext Desktop Public Beta, Powered By Adobe AIR

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 Solutions, today announced general availability of Socialtext Signals(TM), the Twitter-style social messaging interface for the Socialtext platform. Socialtext Signals provides customers simple and efficient information sharing capabilities, and further expands the company's enterprise social networking and collaboration platform. Socialtext also announced the public beta availability of the Socialtext Desktop, a rich desktop application powered by Adobe(R) AIR(R), for monitoring and participating in social networking, collaboration and social messaging.

Here's what customers are saying about Socialtext Signals, in 140 characters or less:

  • "I've been predicting the convergence of Wikis, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Socialtext Signals just made it a reality," says Montgomery Flinsch, Electronic Publishing & Media Technology Services, Mayo Clinic.
  • "Signals allows students to blast a digital nugget of importance to the class. It's a digital espresso shot that makes us all smarter," said John Gallaugher, Associate Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College.
  • "Signals lets us spread great ideas like wildfire and extinguish bad ones rapidly. That's value for our clients and our firm," said Lisa Palmer, Sr. Vice President at Davies Public Affairs

The official release of Socialtext Signals introduces the same micro-blogging style of open sharing that today's popular public tools offer, but keeps the conversations secure within the framework of the organization. Unlike standalone "Twitter-clones," Socialtext Signals(TM) provides an integrated user experience for social messaging across the Socialtext platform, such as the ability to Signal in context of wiki editing. Socialtext Signals(TM) amplifies, clarifies and complements other collaboration activities, eliminating the need for playing "email volleyball" with attachments and allowing coworkers to transparently work and collaborate on common goals.

Socialtext Desktop is built using Adobe AIR technology, a cross-platform runtime and key component of the Adobe Flash Platform. Within Socialtext Desktop, Adobe AIR enables a persistent, rich interface for automatic notification of Signals (what people are saying and sharing) and Updates (automatically generated notifications about what people are working in: wiki edits, blog posts, comments, profile edits), with the ability to post at your fingertips. Socialtext users can download the public beta of Socialtext Desktop at http://socialtext.com/products/desktop.php. For more information about Adobe AIR, visit www.adobe.com/go/air.

"The rich experience that Adobe AIR provides for Web applications outside of the browser is a perfect match with Socialtext's unique flexible SaaS-hosted and SaaS-appliance delivery," said Bryant Macy, director of product marketing for the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. "Socialtext Desktop is a great example of how Adobe Flash Platform technologies can be used to create intuitive, highly interactive business-critical Web applications that improve productivity in the enterprise."

"As the enterprise landscape transforms to incorporate social media tools, many customers told us of their need to integrate a micro-blogging function into their existing collaboration platform," said Eugene Lee, CEO, Socialtext. "Signals creates a new workplace environment that amplifies and complements other collaboration activity, allowing individuals to transparently work and collaborate on common goals through a secure social messaging application within the organization."

About Socialtext

As the Enterprise 2.0 leader, Socialtext applies Web 2.0 technologies to the critical challenges facing businesses. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, partners, and customers. Socialtext provides hosted and appliance-based solutions to more than 4,000 customers world-wide, including BASF, Boston College, CondeNet, Epitaph Records, IKEA, Intel, MicroStrategy, MWW Group, Nokia, SAP, Sunguard, Symantec, and USA Today.

Socialtext's flagship product, Socialtext Workspace, is the first enterprise wiki and the foundation of the connected collaboration platform. Socialtext People enables enterprise social networking. Socialtext Dashboard provides personalized and customizable widget-based interface for people and teams to manage attention. SocialCalc is the social spreadsheet for distributed teams. These products deliver connected collaboration with context. Learn more about Socialtext at www.socialtext.com.

[Via http://www.prnewswire.com]