socialtext

Socialtext offers enterprise microblogging in a box

As a follow-up to its free, 50-user microblogging product, Socialtext is launching a new paid service for large to enterprise-sized companies that lets them run the Twitter-like service behind the firewall, and with many more users.

Companies that want it can pay $1 per user, per month, alongside a monthly fee that pays for Socialtext's server appliance. This hardware runs the microblogging software locally, and can be connected to a company's backup systems for if something goes wrong, although it makes nightly backups of its own. The appliance fee also covers monthly software updates that will fix bugs … Read more

Do I look ugly in this open-source license?

A bad economy is good for open source, goes the increasingly conventional wisdom. However, while it's undoubtedly a good time to be in the market with a low-cost, high-value alternative to proprietary software, there are tell-tale signs that the recession isn't blessing all open-source companies equally.

For example, at the Enterprise 2.0 conference on Tuesday Socialtext founder Ross Mayfield declared, in the words of a conference attendee via Twitter, that Socialtext's first quarter "sucked" and that its "pipeline collapsed." Socialtext, once described as a highflier in a "sizzling market," has … Read more

Webware Radar: Get 5,000 music tracks for free

The Free Music Archive, an organization created by WFMU, a "freeform" radio station, has officially launched into beta. So far, the site has 5,000 tracks that users can download for free. According to the site's founders, the Free Music Archive is aimed at becoming a repository of tracks, remixes, and music clips for personal consumption. Any of the songs can be added to podcasts, video shows, or a playlist. No licensing fees or royalties will be charged. The organization hopes that through free downloads, more people will buy an artist's full album. Along with a … Read more

Open Sources Episode 7: pervasive open source

Episode 7 of Open Sources started off just fine as our guest Chris Fleck, Vice President, Solutions Development & Community Evangelism, Citrix joined us on time and with a good Skype connection. Sadly, AudioHijack had a bit of a hiccup and stopped recording. As such, we'll have to try again with Chris. In the meantime you can check out his blog.

You can also download the MP3 or Ogg

On the plus side, we effectively use the mute button in order to avoid the breathiness you've come to love. Next week we're recording with Reductive Labs/Puppet … Read more

Socialtext co-founder: Enterprise Twitter isn't enough

Enterprise social software company Socialtext is releasing Socialtext 3.0, with the features we previewed here in April: the corporate social network Socialtext People, and a revised home page for business users, Socialtext Dashboard.

These functions, plus a revised and streamlined user interface, will be embedded in the Socialtext suite, along with a new feature that records a running stream of who's doing what and where on the system, which users can subscribe to from their profile pages or their dashboards. It's almost, but not quite, Socialtext's own Twitter for enterprise customers. Missing is the capability for … Read more

SocialText wiki platform gets collaborative spreadsheets

Corporate Wiki software company SocialText is adding a spreadsheet to its wiki product. The new feature, SocialCalc, allows users to collaborate on spreadsheets the same way they do in the company's text-based Wikis. The product is based on Dan Bricklin's open-source Wikicalc.

For spreadsheet jockeys this is both good and bad news. On the positive side, SocialCalc spreadsheets inherit wiki-style revision tracking, which is an automatic audit trail that will arguably be even more important on spreadsheets with financial and other hard data on them than it is on text-based wiki pages. "There's no inherent audit … Read more

Socialtext enterprise wiki getting social network features

If you love a good theory--of psychology, physics, economics, you name it--go work at SocialText. These guys live in their heads. That became apparent when I talked to founder Ross Mayfield and newish CEO Eugene Lee this week about the updates they're making to the company's enterprise wiki product. I learned that if you want to sell to enterprise IT bigwigs, you need to talk a good talk. You need to, "reduce the latency of getting information transmitted."

Which, I think, means: Talk fast.

And it helps to have some contemporary features in the products your … Read more

SocialText gets a new CEO and Series C funding

Open-source wiki company SocialText just pulled down a Series C round of funding ($9.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurveston, Omidyar Network, SAP Ventures, Intel Capital, plus a few angel investors). It also got a new CEO, Eugene Lee.

Congratulations to Ross Mayfield and the SocialText team. My one question in this is why no new investors joined in the round. If I remember right, the investors above are the same who invested in the last round. This either means that the Series C round was so hot that the existing investors didn't want to share it, or that … Read more