Comments on: Will you Twitter inside the enterprise?

By: naffis

naffis — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:02:53 +0000

Jen, no problem. Just want to make the distinction clear to everyone. We put the security and integrity of our customers data above all else and don’t want to be lumped into the ransom category.

The product offiicially launches tomorrow so if you want to wait until then you can sign up for an account with a 60 day trial. If you really want to get a peak today though shoot us an email at support@present.ly

By: Jen Robinson

Jen Robinson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:56:33 +0000

Naffis: If it’s true that present.ly may be installed behind the firewall, then that’s great news! My understanding was that it’s only available as a hosted application. Mea culpa. How ’bout you send me a beta invite so I can take a look around?

By: naffis

naffis — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:52:15 +0000

Jen, I don’t believe Present.ly has “gone wrong right off the bat.” The enterprise version of Present.ly is meant to be installed in-house and behind the corporate firewall to give businesses the highest level of security.

Furthermore present.ly does not allow employees to create their own ad-hoc networks and communicate sensitive company information unless the company has signed up for an account - in other words we don’t hold companies “hostage” for their own data as many have described.

By: Jen Robinson

Jen Robinson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:32:35 +0000

Nice summary, Jevon. I agree that enterprise customers require features that aren’t necessary in the consumer space. Your bullet list is a good set of considerations to start.

A couple of these vendors (Yammer, present.ly) have built really compelling products, but they’ve gone wrong right off the bat. Companies like mine will not embrace social messaging unless they retain complete control over the information. If users can’t discuss sensitive topics, then just use Twitter. If the information exchanged is sensitive, then storing that data in the public cloud is entirely out of the question.

I’d love to believe that companies will adopt this model sooner than later, but for now I’m a skeptic.

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:31:41 +0000

Fundamentally, then, serving as independent ‘functions’ (oversimplified) that can be leveraged in a larger scheme, but not ‘hard leveraged’ (like SOA elements). A bit of mashup, but not really. More thoughts…

Fits in with fundamental premise: the value is in the connections. [first you have to have the things to connect ]

By: Jevon MacDonald

Jevon MacDonald — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:05:48 +0000

Paula: I think the tools naturally demand autonomy, but it seems to me that the real power is when we manage to connect them to existing systems,. then they can act more like an agent of change and it might be easier to quantify the ROI than it has been so far.

By: Paula Thornton

Paula Thornton — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:57:58 +0000

My current thinking space is on how to allow these tools their own autonomy, but yet ‘offer’ them as part of a framework for getting work done. Thoughts?

By: naffis

naffis — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:25:17 +0000

Jevon, if you’re interested in micro-blogging and yammer check out Present.ly http://present.ly it’s a micro-blogging tool for businesses similar to Yammer, but with added features like media sharing and groups. The enterprise version is also available for orgs to bring in-house.

By: Jeremiah owyang

Jeremiah owyang — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:22:35 +0000

Good post, Jennifer Leggio had a post talking about what enterprises will look for. To me, security is the first thing, esp as these internal conversations span the firewall

Also, here’s a list of alternatives to Yammer

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/09/08/list-of-enterprise-microblogging-tools-twitter-for-the-intranet/