ringside

A promising open-source company bites the dust

Ringside Networks was a very cool company - one of the best new open-source companies, as I wrote earlier this year. The company had a dream similar to Ning's - to make social networking-type applications an integral part of a wide array of websites and enterprises.

This past month, however, even as Ning neared 500,000 social networks (at least one of which is not used for porn! Go figure!!), Ringside went down for the count.

Why? How could a company flush with some of the best venture money in the business - Matrix Partners - go under even before it really had a chance to sell into a welcoming market? Bob Bickel, Ringside's co-founder, explains:

We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact.… Read more

The Enterprise 2.0 mishmash of muddle

I didn't attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this year, but judging by Jeff Whatcott's commentary, I'm not sure I missed much.

It would appear that the Enterprise 2.0 world is still recycling the same froth in an attempt to stand out. Here's what Whatcott had to say:

I spent some time checking out the competition to benchmark our messaging and functionality. I was struck by how thoroughly undifferentiated the pitches were. Everyone was giving essentially the same demo, talking about the same functionality and use cases.

Internally, I heard from Jean Barmash on the Alfresco consulting team who echoed Jeff's comments:

Walking around the exhibition floor, it looked like everybody was offering very similar stuff--big focus on "communities"--creating them, managing them, etc.

It feels like we're in the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Let's call it Enterprise 1.8 where everyone is showing the right slideware and demos, but few, if any, really know how to put it all to productive business use.

Until the money steps in, I think we're going to remain in a curious limbo where "shiny baubles" (a colleague's favorite term) get rolled out widely but for which few pay because no one on the enterprise side has really connected the dots between community, user-generated content, and enterprise productivity/business value.… Read more

Ringside Networks snares Shaun Connolly

Well, that didn't take long. First it was Barry Klawans taking an "extended break" (which lasted approximately 3 minutes ;-), and now it's Shaun Connolly of JBoss fame getting back into the ring with Bob Bickel and friends at Ringside Networks, the open-source social networking platform.

This isn't surprising, as Shaun worked with the Ringside team at Bluestone and again at JBoss. It was bound to happen....

The best new open-source companies

There were a slew of new open-source companies launched (or still getting first looks) at last week's Open Source Business Conference. A few sites (Socialized Software and ZDNet, to name two of them)have been pointing to some of the more promising ones.

Here are a few to watch:

Acquia - Drupal-based social/web content management company Ringside Networks - Social networking platform/application server Loopfuse - Marketing automation (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to Loopfuse) Projity - Microsoft Project competitor

And more. Check out the sites above to see who else caught the eye. Interestingly, JBoss executives sit … Read more

Ringside Networks brings open source to social networking

Ringside Networks on Tuesday plans to announce an open-source server for running social applications on existing Web sites, Facebook, and other social-networking destinations in the future.

The company was founded by Bob Bickel, who helped direct open-source Java company JBoss, and funded by David Skok, a venture capitalist and former board member of JBoss.

The idea is to make it easier to add social application features, like user profiles, friends, and groups, to existing Web sites and to create close interoperability with Facebook, where there are 19,000 third-party applications.

Applications written for Ringside Networks' "social application engine" … Read more

Ringside to offer first open-source 'social-application server'

I guess it was just a matter of time before Bob Bickel, Rich Friedman, and other former JBoss employees started another application server company. Who knew, however, that they'd launch the world's first open-source "social-application server"?

What the heck is that? Well, for one thing, Ringside Networks is certainly an innovative use of open source. For those who think that open source can't compete and innovate new markets, Ringside is about to put that theory to the test.

According to a data sheet the company provided me, to be distributed at Ringside's formal launch at next week's Open Source Business Conference, this is what the product does and is:

Ringside Social Application Server is the first open-source platform that enables Web site owners to build and deploy social applications that operate with existing Web site content and business applications while seamlessly integrating with social networks such as Facebook.

This provides three primary advantages: … Read more

Ringside Networks looks to flavor social apps with open source

Veteran tech entrepreneur Bob Bickel has let out a whisper of his new venture, Ringside Networks, which is looking to combine open source with social networking.

Bickel worked at open-source company JBoss, where he was head of business development, and at application server maker Bluestone, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

He said he has assembled a group of people who have worked at those two companies and he's gotten the support of venture capitalist David Skok from Matrix Partners, an investor in JBoss.

In his personal blog on Tuesday, Bickel, a runner and track coach, described his frustration in … Read more