Blogs and social networks and wikis, oh my!

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in harnessing community and the work of individuals to solve traditional problems of enterprise," says Martin Tobias, a venture partner at Seattle-based Ignition Partners, which has invested in Cloudmark.

Unwilling to be left behind, some large technology companies, such as mighty Microsoft and enterprise database provider EMC, are now incorporating some of these technologies into their own products. But most of their rivals are still trying to figure out where these various social media tools fit into their technology product offerings. One reason for this delayed response to a now classic challenge by more nimble startups is that most corporate buyers of technology have themselves failed to come to grips with the threat or promise of social media services to their business strategies.

Today, most corporations still do little, if anything, with blogs, wikis and social networks, but that will change quickly over the next few years as more companies integrate these technologies into their daily routines. And if early signs are any indication, the evolution will lead to blogs replacing blast e-mails, wikis strengthening collaboration software and social networks taking conversations around the water cooler to a meta-level never envisioned by the most enthusiastic evangelist of the Internet boom.

Those buyers and sellers of technology that embrace the power of social media services early in the life cycle of this new tech sector will no doubt gain a key competitive edge over rivals, provided they figure out how best to use the newfangled Web tools. Those decisions could well be the most important ones that the storied C-suite makes in the coming years.

So far, there are few obvious signs of the best corporate strategic use of social media services. The two high-tech powerhouses most out in front of the public curve with blogs are Sun and Microsoft, both of which have established blogging Web sites for customers, partners and employees to see and use. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz and Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble are two of the best in the corporate blogging business today.

But many others are tapping into the power of blogs behind a veil of secrecy. A major European pharmaceuticals company, for example, has enhanced its competitive intelligence unit with Traction Software. Previously, the company's competitive intelligence team would survey published sources of information such as patent filings or new-drug announcements, talk to salespeople and customers and then summarize the material in a long document that would then be sent out via e-mail to thousands of people in the company.

The problem was that valuable information would often be buried on page 27 of a 50-page report or wouldn't be shared with key distribution and partners and customers because some of the information was sensitive. Traction's software established a Web log for the pharmaceutical company's competitive intelligence unit to share the information with management, sales and marketing executives. When something of particular interest to a specific executive is added to the blog, he will be automatically alerted by using search and syndication technologies. And for those executives that don't want to check the Web site continually, executives can set the service to send them a daily newsletter with information relevant only to them.

Furthermore, distributors and partners can gain access to specific parts of the blog that are of interest to them but will still be prohibited from accessing areas containing confidential information. "It makes the information more actionable and valuable," Traction's Lloyd says. "Another IT customer of ours at a big pharma got a promotion two days after deploying this within the company."

He says that Traction's software is used by 125 companies, governmental agencies and nonprofits, among them Bank of America, the U.S. Department of Defense and the IJIS Institute, a so-called 501(c)(3) nonprofit group for the information technology industry.

Why do wikis work? 'Simplicity'
Wikis are also slowly starting to be deployed by companies large and small. Socialtext, which offers an enterprise-class-hosted wiki, has more than 100 customers, of which 20 are in the Fortune 500.

"A wiki works because of its simplicity," says Ross Mayfield, co-founder and chief executive officer of Socialtext. "Our challenge is to make something as easy to use as e-mail with better

[chasen51]

Social networking, a great tool.

Hello,
I am a member of a new and small social network called NetQuesta.com and I have to say that it really is a great way of keeping in touch with friends and family. I recently moved from my home state of Michigan out to Arizona and a good friend made this site so we could keep in touch. Its probably one of the best things for me right now as I dont know many people out here. I really think that this is a wave of the future as more and more people move away for jobs and such. I guess as long as the sites stay clean and keep the rif raff out, they can really be a great tool. NetQuesta.com has become that tool for me and it brings that little piece of home to me that I miss.