Comments on: SocialText Putting A Little Social Into…Enterprise Wikis

By: Cirro

Cirro — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:44:11 +0000

This is yet another worthless exercise in dredging the social-media boatwreck out from the fetid waters of web 2.0

This is pointless.
This is utterly useless.

I couldn’t begin to document the technical errors, let alone the GUI-related ones that are evident in this abomination and with this buggy product in general.

This can only end in more FAIL.

By: FredCavazza.net » Le plein de nouveaux outils orientés entreprise 2.0

FredCavazza.net » Le plein de nouveaux outils orientés entreprise 2.0 — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:24:12 +0000

[...] sociale” encore plus fournie et la possibilité de composer sa page (plus d’infos ici : SocialText Putting A Little Social Into…Enterprise Wikis) [...]

By: Ross Mayfield

Ross Mayfield — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:30:00 +0000

See the corrections above, and go easy on poor steve

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:57:24 +0000

I would have to agree with steves comment

By: steve

steve — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:56:40 +0000

The site looks quite “spacey”

By: Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Keeping up with the BlogJones..... mid-April '08

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:34:54 +0000

[...] example of social networking features being added in - everywhere. Too bad Ross Mayfield and Pete Kaminski didn’t come to us - we could have saved him a whole LOT of money ($1,000,000s.) Can’t wait for Evan Williams to [...]

By: Dont Understand

Dont Understand — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:12:47 +0000

@morethantechdev
thats right. selling to the enterprise cost $24mm. thats right. you have to spend money to make money, right?

Thats right…….raise $24mm…..to sell to the enterprise……..only to make a $24mm over 5 years? Now thats efficiency.

what a joke

You must be an MBA douchebag who despises developers.

By: More than Tech Dev

More than Tech Dev — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:08:12 +0000

@Dont Understand: Interesting to see developers chime in thinking all money goes to technical product development without any understanding of what it takes to sell into the enterprise.

By: Dont Understand

Dont Understand — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:06:44 +0000

I don’t understand what socialtext has spent $24mm on? On a wiki?

By: Putting People in Software « Eric Gonzalez

Putting People in Software « Eric Gonzalez — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:39:56 +0000

[...] have probably noticed a dearth of posts about Socialtext. If you’ve followed Ross Mayfield, Techcrunch and Mashable this morning, you now know why - Socialtext is putting people into wikis. I’ve [...]

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » SocialText、エンタープライズWikiにソーシャル機能投入

TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » SocialText、エンタープライズWikiにソーシャル機能投入 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:06:56 +0000

[...] [原文へ] [...]

By: Jcyreus

Jcyreus — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:28:51 +0000

Problem is that so many companies are running on tight budgets these days (at least the one that signs my paycheck is) and in many cases the decision makers for purchasing a product like this would be challenged to see the value of Socialtext without a clear explanation of how it could help their company to overcome their internal communications challenges and applying that to some meaningful ROI data. Personally (an professionally) I could really use something like this, but I fear that I may be the exception.

By: Chris Heuer

Chris Heuer — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:26:49 +0000

I think it is a step in the right direction and a great move for SocialText - very much looking forward to getting this upgrade on our workspaces.

Still, I am a bummed that JotSpot’s original vision and direction was lost - there were some great ideas in the system that were lost when it became google sites and I haven’t seen anywhere else.

That said, I saw a demo of what IBM is doing with Lotus Notes 8, and it is the closest thing I have actually seen to the supposed ideal of Facebook for the enterprise.

Flexibility and extendability are still the key differentiators IMO, so basing the architecture on Google Widgets makes a lot of sense.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:19:09 +0000

Social into the enterprise….

“FASCINATING”

(sorry)

By: steve

steve — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:17:46 +0000

Ross, thanks for the follow up. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations:

list on appliance: 10K a year - let’s say you sell for 8K
2,000 appliance companies - that $16M
if that’s 80% of your revenue, then you will do $20M this year

even with heavy discounting you should see >$15M. Now, with 50 employees, the burn is high, but congratulations on building the business.

By: Ross Mayfield

Ross Mayfield — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:03:53 +0000

@steve I sent Mike a correction for their CrunchBase details

By: jenkins

jenkins — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:02:42 +0000

strange product. i doubt it works in the end. Just my 2 cents.

By: Stuart Glendinning Hall

Stuart Glendinning Hall — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:47:42 +0000

Hmm, be interesting to see how enterprise wiki competitors like Atlassian’s Confluence respond too.

By: Laurent Blondeau (evidencesx)

Laurent Blondeau (evidencesx) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:45:26 +0000

I guess FB has no interest (until $ which is already something…) to go on corp tracks. They have been fight about privacy and Beacon, and there’s some waves to come next. We have to keep a borderline between “corp” tools and social ones, like, in my opinion, FB ; it’s not a tech limit, but ethic one I think.
L.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:43:27 +0000

Oh, one more thing I just noticed. Crunchbase lists 4,000 customers for SocialText as of November 2007. Above Ross says 10,000 customers. That’s a very impressive 250% increase in 6 months. Maybe you can do a follow-up on this amazing sales growth?

By: steve

steve — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:29:25 +0000

If the statistics provided by Ross are accurate, SocialText is either profitable or very close and is generating ~$20M a year in revenue. I’d like to see some Crunch on their finances and exit opportunities. I can read a press release on any site.

By: Chris Yeh

Chris Yeh — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:08:50 +0000

Sam (Lawrence) must still be sleeping–otherwise, I’m sure he would have pointed out that Jive Software’s latest ClearSpace release already includes a personalized dashboard and social networking.

It’s interesting to see all the different folks who are trying to provide “Facebook for the enterprise”. Who will win? Private label social network providers? Collaboration vendors? Or Facebook themselves?

By: Socialtext is Made of People « Scott Schnaars

Socialtext is Made of People « Scott Schnaars — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:29:54 +0000

[...] Well, those things have come! We are all extremely happy to announce that we are launching two exciting, major new features to the…. [...]

By: Marcin Grodzicki

Marcin Grodzicki — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:11:14 +0000

This seems a lot like Google Sites competition - especialy after adding the dashboard with widgets.