LiveWorld now introduces “LiveBar” and Mark Hendrickson from Techcrunch has a review showing now any static website that embeds this lightweight social script.

I first saw mockups of this product a few months ago from LiveWorld, and it seemed impressive, but unlike embedding chat, comments, forums, or blogs directly into the webpage, this is an ‘overlay’ that is quietly positioned at the bottom of any webpage.

What use cases could warrant this overlay experience versus an embed? Existing large websites with an inflexible CMS system that makes UI changes difficult. Companies that want to experiment with social on their websites but aren’t ready to dive in. Lastly, websites with heavy interactive marketing or content where community should take a back seat to what’s being shown. Expect to see competitors of Liveworld to develop their own versions of Livebar, allowing lightweight deployments of community features. Also, expect this to be a great ’sampler product’ for LiveWorld to demonstrate community to hesitant brands –much like the easy to deploy OpinionLab tools.

Looking forward, whether companies like it or not, the future holds that websites will be social, and it means that customer opinions (good and bad) will circumvent their marketing content. The LiveWorld folks also have launched a community site, where you can interact with them further.

I’m conducting a Wave report on this community platform, and it’s become very clear to me that the technology is a commodity (that’s why there are around 100 vendors) and what really is going to count is strategy, service, support, and knowhow.

Related Resources

Status Update 2: The Forrseter Wave Report

What Facebook Connect means to brands

Thinking Long Term: Google’s New Browser ‘Chrome’

Forrester Report: Online Community Best Practices

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I’m deep into the Wave research (read my latest status update) for nine community platforms (big list here), in fact, this week and next, I’m in 5 and a half to 6 hour meetings with vendors getting to know them very well. Of course, that’s just one side of the story, I’m interviewing up to 27 of their customers (brands) to get the ‘other’ side of the story. You’ll see me pop up online for “Twitter breaks” here and there, surfacing for air, then submerging back again.

I wasn’t surprised to hear from a few brands that not everyone is a fan of Software as a Service (Saas), in fact, for some, on-premise software makes a whole lot more sense. What exactly was the pain point with Saas?

Of course, the most obvious points continue to come to mind: conservative companies, or those with truly critical data wanted to have the data on site, or wanted to self-support their own architecture, or wanted to modify the software at their choosing, yet I learned about something that I hadn’t even considered:

Some brands felt that being tied to SaaS meant they were at the mercy of the vendor when it came to the software architecture. While this is certainly the case not just for SaaS but all non-opensource software, when a vendor would upgrade a version, some brands were forced to accept the changes. In some cases, some brands were not aware/prepared of some upcoming upgrades to the SaaS software and were blindsided to the changes.

Furthermore, these brands felt that the larger customers who wanted specific feature upgrades were able to influence the vendor through direct pressure or even fueling the R&D work through feature requests. What’s wrong with that? Alot, if the feature requests of the larger customer don’t reflect the needs of a smaller SMB customer. Since the software is delivered over the web, there was little recourse for the smaller brand to deny the changes, they pretty much had to suck it up.

Now you may ask, isn’t this a problem with all software, SaaS or on-premise? Yes but vendors are more likely to allow customers to use multiple versions of on-premise software, of course there’s a date when they will no longer support it. Yet vendors who provide SaaS are far more likely to provide only one version, forcing clients to swallow the changes on demand.

Have you had a bad experience with Software as a Service? Leave a comment, let’s explore this further.

Related reading: Community Platforms: Here comes the CIO.

Update: As usual, the conversation has also splintered into FriendFeed.

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We’re all social creatures, and we thrive on the interactions of others, in fact, these interactions are the primary drivers for troublemakers in communities.

I’ve read stories about how babies that are given all the proper medical attention, food, shelter to deem them ‘healthy’ whither away to near death if they don’t get human contact and love and care. The same applies to prison, perhaps one of the more dreaded punishments is sending inmates to the ‘hole’ for isolation from all social contact. POWs can muster the strength to survive knowing that a series of Morse code taps can signal to fellow inmates that they’re ok and cared about. How does this apply to online communities?

[The ‘Bozo’ Feature renders the troublemakers’ activities invisible to everyone else, naturally severing what they most crave from others –attention and reactions]

One of my primary coverage areas is on community platforms (also known as white label social networks) that are used by brands to deploy their own social features on their corporate domain. I’ve come across both Mzinga and Pluck that offer this feature, leave a comment below if you also have this feature.

Community managers have a few options when dealing with troublemakers, the first is to take them on head on, either in private or public, sometimes it leads them to banning them. Banning them (removing their account) often doesn’t solve many issues, instead they may choose to create new accounts, or figure out how to cause additional trouble in subvert ways.

Some community managers who can’t deal any further with these troublemakers are left to only one option, by rendering the troublemaker as a “Bozo” using the communtiy software. What’s the “Bozo” feature? It renders the troublemaker invisible to everyone else.

Troublemakers thrive on the attention they get from others and enjoy stirring up fights, but they won’t know that no one else can see them, and therefore assume everyone is ignoring them, or their ploys hold no weight. As a result, they’ll slowly move away, sometimes never realizing that they’ve been labeled a “Bozo”. This gives the community manager a way to defuse the situation, in a non-confrontational manner, allowing for the troublemaker to quietly move on their own.

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I’m currently doing an intensive 3 month research project on the topic of Community Platforms, and it’s become very clear that by talking to many of the 27 brands, 9 vendors, and leaning on forecast data where many decisions are currently being made to purchase these enterprise software solutions. To start with, many solutions (define as a set of software, services, support) are being purchased by marketers who want to bring a social aspect to their corporate website.

These marketing folks, who may have worked with IT in the past to load CMS programs are bound by corporate red tape, de-prioritized by IT project management, or want to evade the rigors of legal and security and free to purchase community platforms using Software as a Service model (SaaS). Why is this beneficial? As they’ve only to rely on IT for single sign on (SSO) they often can handle the rest within the web marketing team, or lean on the services of the community vendor.

Yet, they aren’t the only buyers, HR departments are starting to become sponsors for enterprise social network platforms to improve internal knowledge transfers, collaboration, and developing specific programs for alumni, new hires, interns, and even women using pre-packaged use case features provided by these vendors.

You can see where this is headed right? IT departments realize that fragmented communtiy software is going to lead to a disparate mess to clean up, and many are starting to make recommendations for enterprise platforms that will span the usage of the whole company. Why? To reduce overall resources, ensure security, centralize data, and ensure, well that they are responsible and safe when it comes to their information.

I’ve only heard of a few instances from the marketers that I’ve interviewed where IT has thought of community platforms as an enterprise solution rather than a one-off by marketing.

Talking with many of these folks in this research project, I could make the case that in 12-24 months we’ll start to see CIOs start to initiate projects to deliver enterprise social networking mandates, take ownership over these disparate projects, and wake up and realize the importance of these tools beyond marketing and HR.

This yields all kinds of questions regarding: security, what does enterprise-class entail, how will Microsoft/SAP/IBM respond, will Saas or on-premise software be required, governance, flexibility, allowance of third-party widgets, and costs. More to come on this as I dive further into this research project.

It’s amazing it’s taken so many years for this to come around, I first started writing about this back in 2005 with Dennis McDonald.

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One of the ways I tell companies how they can best serve their market is to be transparent on how they build products. By doing so, it helps folks not only understand, but appreciate the level of effort that goes into creating a service or product. While analysts offer guidance and advisory sessions, we’re most known for the reports that we create, in fact, these are key products that help decision makers be successful.

Demand for community platforms, yet too many vendors
I’m asked a few times a week on which community vendor to choose, with a list of 80-120 vendors on my blog and a more refined catalog on the Forrester site, it’s very confusing for brands to determine who’s best. If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know I’ve been watching the community platform (aka white label social network space) with great interest, even before I joined Forrester. A few weeks ago I announced my intention to start a Forrester Wave report, which will segment out nine vendors that will meet the needs of Interactive Marketers at Enterprise Class companies (companies with more than 1,000 employees).

The Forrester Wave Methdology
Using the refined Forrester Wave methodology that has been completed by many analysts before me, we’re nearly half way done with this 3 month research project to understand, and segment the community platform market. For this particular report, it doesn’t make sense to utilize crowd sourcing methods (although I’ve used crowd sourcing for other reports), the Wave method is already refined from the many analysts before me.

To date, we’ve created a detailed scorecard that involved a feedback loop with major brands who have recently deployed community software. This particular scorecard contains over 54 criteria that was assembled through client discussions, a panel of a trusted folks who have deployed communities, discussions with fellow analysts, and feedback from the vendors. Next, we collect data from the 9 vendors, each completing the scorecard for a total of 496 cells, then I create my own sheet of cells verifying what we found for a total of 992 cells of data collection.

Also, we’ve started interviewing and recording feedback from 27 brands that have deployed community software from these vendors, in order to find out what went right –and what could be improved from each of these nine vendors. Again, more spreadsheets and data collection.

Starting this week, we start a series of day-long labs with each of the vendors, where will be looking under the covers at the actual software, discuss their business strategy, and understand how their community offerings can best help marketers. We’re looking at the market from a variety of angles, to ensure that an accurate report is created.

Collaborative environment
At Forrester, an analyst never works in a vacuum, it’s collaborative and I’ve a lot of minds to lean on. It’s not just me alone, I’m getting help from analyst and my editor Shar Vanboskirk, analyst Oliver Young who knows the enterprise side of this space, analyst Suresh Vittal who’s completed many waves, analyst Laura Ramos, and constant support from research associate Sarah Glass (my guiding light, and detailed taskmaster) and research associate Zach Reiss-Davis. I’m under the guidance of my research director Christine Overby, and am in constant contact with our seasoned Josh Bernoff. Despite suggestions that some analyst firms do not have knowledge management strategies isn’t quite true. In fact, we retain the knowledge of our colleagues through tools like internal wikis, constant team communication, and most importantly knowledge and insights generated by reports will live on for colleagues and clients on the website.

Focusing in
That’s just the half way point: next I have to analyze, score, conduct follow ups to ensure all the data is correct, and begin the scoring process. You’re going to notice a decrease in my posting over the next few weeks, and my online activity start to wean off as I work hard to deliver a quality report later this fall that will help interactive marketers make the right decision.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process (coming soon)
Part 4: Announcing the Wave (coming soon)

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A few months ago, I put a call out to the industry to submit to this catalog of the Community Platform space (also known as the White Label Social Network space), my interest in this space grew from a list I started over a year ago on my blog even before I was an analyst covering this space. The list continues to grow, as commodity software is fueled by market demand for brands to create their own hosted communities.

Forrester Report: Announcing Vendor Product Catalog of Community Platforms For The Interactive Marketer (part 1/2)
This report is the first of two, If you’re a client, you probably have access to the report, or you can purchase it on the site, we stand by our work and offer a money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied.

This Vendor Product Catalog which we’re launching today is more or less the “yellow pages” of the space, but unlike my generic list on my blog, the companies have been vetted and important information has been added such as:

Enterprise focus (percent of clients with more than 1000 employees)

SMB focus (percent of clients with less than 1000 employees)

Categorization of their business model (Breakdown of Hardware, Hosted Web Service, Services, Software, Support)

Top three industries the vendor is involved with

Focus on external/vs internal community deployment (customer/employee)

Brands should use this report to:
You should use this report to help narrow down specific needs and questions you have – given this is such a large industry, these key attributes will help you filter.

In the spirit of Social Computing, this report has rating and comment features, this way clients can rate and rank their experience with the vendors, much in the way CNET or Amazon.com does for consumer products. So if you’ve used these vendors –leave a comment and rank the experience.

There were almost 50 products submitted to this Vendor Product Catalog which is pretty amazing considering how young the market is. The data has helped us to select the vendors for my next report:

Vendors should use this report to:
If you didn’t initially submit to this catalog but feel you should be on it, you can submit their information online here and selecting ‘Community Platforms For The Interactive Marketer’ from the VPC topic drop down menu.

Underway: Wave Report on Community Platforms (part 2)
I recently announced my intent to complete a Forrester Wave report which will focus on the nine firms best suited for Fortune 5000 interactive marketers. This is currently underway. I’m gathering market requirements from clients and analysts to create a detailed and thorough scorecard which will be completed during in depth meetings with each of the nine final vendors. In order to keep the process simple, I won’t be disclosing who the nine vendors are until the report goes live in October. You can learn more about this and other Wave reports on the Forrester site.

In addition to thanking all the vendors who submitted, I’d like to recognize Sarah Glass who has been instrumental in getting this catalog done. Although you can’t often see, behind the scenes, there is a large research group here that supports the analysts – I’m grateful.

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If you’re a white label social network vendor, you’re likely getting many new clients at corporations that have special pricing needs, let’s discuss this scenario.

Yesterday, I spoke to a white label social network who had some challenges pricing their product for their corporate clients. I speak to both vendors and clients, so it’s interesting to hear from both ends about concerns, triggers, and final deals.

There are a few ways to approach pricing your social media product for corporate clients, you can do a fixed amount, a layered pricing model (buy as you need), variable on performance (pay as you consume) or a combination thereof.

I’ve found that for new programs (like social media) these are often experimental “new media” budgets and although these products and services tend to be inexpensive, there are still some pricing considerations you must be prepared for. Most corporations issue quarterly or annual budgets to business groups, often with a fixed amount. If you require additional funds, you’ll have to present a business case to management, which can also take some time, as well as be a headache to validate one’s new business programs.

One additional factor is that budgets that are not entirely used up, they get recaptured by the umbrella organization, and could be an indicator that the business group doesn’t need further funds, resulting in reduced budget the next quarter. There’s an inherent risk here as well, as if all of the budget is used up on primarily a single vendor, the ability to have flexible spending for other services is limited. I draw these factors from both my experience having a small budget for social media as well as speaking to many clients on a similar front.

In my vendor product catalog (which will publish soon), I can see that there are many different pricing models happening for the white label social network industry, while there are many different pricing styles, perhaps the most common is fixed band pricing (fixed monthly fee with low variable by user).

If you’re a white label social network and are getting push back from clients about pricing and you’re not sure why, you should examine your pricing offer. For situations like this, social media vendors should experiment with fixed price bands (rather than variable by usage) so that business groups confidently purchase and keep within their budget. Then, as the program grows, the client business group won’t have to go to management when costs exceed their budget in early stages of this program, and then having to demonstrate success.

Of course, when the community platform shows high degrees of success, the opportunity for increasing support, hosting and pipe capabilities, and other services (including pay as you use pricing). So in summary, keep it simple, when dealing with corporations who are just experimenting with community software, offer a set or fixed price, at least till the community is up and running.

I’d like to hear from you, are you a vendor or a client? What are effective pricing models for new business programs (esp social media)

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Blogging the status of my research agenda has become an efficient way for me to communicate with the market I cover, as well as signal to clients new areas of expertise.

Fortunately, much of the market I cover (or their PR firms) read this blog and my tweets (and vice versa), making my job as a researcher very, very efficient.

Many weeks ago, I made a call for the vendor product catalog in this market, (and via email and twitter) that document, is a detailed index of over 40 vendors in the space, (aprox 50% of the market) and will be available to Forrester clients and those who submitted to it in the coming days.

My research agenda for this quarter is to complete a Forrester Wave (learn more), which is a market segmentation and prioritization report that will help clients (Fortune 5000, Interactive Marketers) determine which vendor is right for them. (I get asked daily in one medium or another who to buy). The primary purpose of this report is to aid my clients to efficiently come to a short list or decision on who to buy. The lingering side effects could also signal to the VC space who to fund, as well as within the industry who will want to partner from a CMS, ERP, CRM, widget, services aspect.

Due to the rigorous methodology (there will be thousands of excel cells created, analyzed, and weighed among our team) The Wave will only include several vendors. During this 10 week process, I’ll be following the guidelines set before me (we’ve done many Wave reports) this consuming activity will meet my entire report coverage for the entire quarter. This coupled with the changes in our team, will keep me very busy, I hope it doesn’t impact my other duties, as well as blogging.

From time to time, I’ll post updates about where I am in developing this product (reports are one of our products), in that spirit, I’m now whittling down the big list to the core vendors that can stand the rigors of enterprise requirements (Fortune 5000) and are primarily suited for interactive marketers (mainly external deployments) who I serve.

If you’ve already submitted to the vendor product catalog, I’m already reviewing with the team. However, if you have an extensive track record for the Fortune 5000 interactive marketer (perhaps with references), and did not submit, you ought to let me know, email me at jowyang at forrester.com . I’ve already reached out to a few who I think could qualify.

You’ve already shown that you know what analysts do, but how we do it is a shrouded mystery, so now, you’re getting a behind the scenes tour as I trek forward –a little transparency should help you to better understand what we do.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process (coming soon)
Part 4: Announcing the Wave (coming soon)

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Apparently, a chord was struck in this recent post “Social Software: Here come the CMS Vendors“. In summary, the post indicuates that CMS vendors are sniffing the community space, and the comments lit up (you should read them) with vendors from both camps indicating this discussions are happening behind the curtains and hands are extending across the aisle. I also am getting more briefing requests from traditional CMS vendors, who are anxious to get my take on the many options I listed out.

There’s a few interesting discussions that spiraled off the post, and I’d like to highlight some of the interesting ones, there’s an interesting story developing, these stories segue nicely into each other.

Some enterprises may not be ready for social
First of all, Larry at ZDnet quickly picks up and covers the post: “Content management software vendors eye social networking“, and suggests that acquisitions (option two) for CMS vendors makes since. Larry adds a very important caveat, some organizations and members (internal or external) may not adopt social behaviors. Our social technographic research indicates that’s very much the truth, before any brand decide to use these tools, they should start with member behavior, we’ve already made some of this data available for free. Primarily, the main behavior is ‘joiner’ although depending on the deployment, it could also be ‘creator, critic,’ and certainly ’spectator’

Some CMS vendors may not be ready for open
To echo that very fine point, Steve, in his thought provoking post “Social Publishing Systems: What about We, the Participants?” asks if “we” are ready to take on more social websites, he then also turns the discussion toward the vendors, and asks if they are prepared to accept open technologies despite that they are from rigid command and control legacies. Steve asks: “Will they embrace OpenSocial? OpenID? Will a focused, open source Drupal vendor like Acquia” When you think about it, CMS systems are designed for management (control) of content and publishing. Social software, which may have guardrails, tends to focus on sharing, connecting, learning, and self-expression in a very large sandbox. Most brands will need both.

Existing fragmented social implementations to be a challenge
EMC’s Len Devanna adds more to the conversation “Social Software and CMS“, as you may know, Documentum, a CMS vendor was acquired by EMC a few years back, and makes sense for this IT behemoth. Naturally, social software has creeped into the employee base (a groundswell) even at this IT vendor shop and Len points out the need for both a mixture of social and CMS systems. The question remains: at what point to they integrate? Where will social stop and CMS begin? Len is out here in CA, and I look forward to seeing him more often to discuss this issue.

Some features will be bolted on
We think highly of the 451Group, (read comments) and their post confirms it “Social (Web) content management” they’ve been watching this from the CMS perspective for some time (and I’ve been watching from the white label sonet) and they suggested that some companies like Vignette and Clickability are further along than realized. It’s difficult to tell how truly robust some of those features are from those landing pages, but compared to the some of the advanced features I’m seeing out of other players, they could be ‘bolt on social’ features added to a platform, rather than a truly social experience. I’m quite positive a debate in our industry over ‘core social platform’ vs ‘bolt on social features’ will take place, I plan to participate.

The Big Question: Will they lead with Community or Publishing Features?
Thinking forward, this really is the crux of the issue that each vendor and industry will have to answer. What will CMS and White Label vendors lead with? Social features or Publishing Features?

Are brands going to be satisfied with CMS systems that “bolt on” social features such as ratings, comments, and discussion boards that are added to existing CMS modules?

Or, will they want fully robust community platforms with extensive profiles, people matching, discussion monitoring, member created on the fly modules that integrate CMS publishing modules?

Will CMS vendors “bolt on” these social features, or offer truly robust community platforms that integrate CMS features

As I get closer to this space, I’ll develop my answer, (read Tony’s at the CMS watch) but in the meantime, let’s hash it out in the comments below.

I’ve started some probes on where we could host a community not-for-profit meet & greet at a neutral location in Silicon Valley in a few months, stay tuned. Or, if you have a venue (you can’t be one of these vendors) and can hold a day event, please let me know via email.

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When many things are equal: your features, your customers, your products, your product roadmap, it’s often hard to differentiate.

Often, I’m getting pitched during briefings by White Label Social Network vendors they’ll often advance to a quadrant slide (almost always in the first quarter of the deck) and their almost always on the right hand top quadrant, using parameters they’ve selected. I’ll frequently ask them to tell me ‘how they are different’, only then, does the conversation get interesting. Of course, I already see stratification in this industry, with differentiation on product offerings.

This is not an endorsement for Jive Software, I’m simply commenting on the marketing efforts that they deploy to stand out from the very crowded marketplace (80-100 competitors, with more on the way). It’s also only a reflection of my perspective, I’ve not done a formal survey to brands to ask them what they think.

With that said, if you take a look at how Jive has been marketing themselves, they clearly stand out. Their VP of Marketing blogs, he ’s part of the conversation in Twitter, and he tells stories that are intended to relate (whether they do or not is unknown) to corporate clients using imagery, storytelling, and icons.

But does it work? Maybe it gets attention, maybe it starts a conversation with those that are pained, but it doesn’t necessarily impact the product, service, and delivery of products. One thing is for sure, it’s significant enough to get me to tell you all about it.

When your market is one sea of gray, and underneath the corporate color scheme you’re all very similar, what are you going to do to standout? This applies to not just your company, but you as a future colleague or employee.

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This is really heaven for me, many of the vendors I cover such as SmallWorld labs, Jive, Telligent, Hivelive, Lithium, Webcrossing, Google all at the same table.

I’m here here at the Online Community Unconference at a session where we’re probing the problems with the White Label Social networking space. The question? Are social platforms shit? (I didn’t come up with, I’m just taking notes)

[The question posed to this roundtable of vendors, clients and analyst: “Are social platforms shit?”]

If you don’t know the value of white label social networking vendors are, many large brands and organizations are hiring them to build online communities for their customers and prospects. I get a few calls every week from clients to discuss this growing need.

What’s interesting is that all the folks at the table are collaborating (as one would expect from the community industry) to discuss pan-industry problems from clients, features, etc.

Who was here? A dozen folks, a majority are vendors, and a few community managers and strategists from brands and companies. Leading this session is Greg Biggers.

Challenges expressed by the table:

Lack of Interoperability within this fledging industry
Platforms don’t have interoperability, due to lack of standards. For example brands create a community for customers, while marketers launch a facebook campaign. Differences include objects, protocols, data types, login, profiles, news page data.

Community Managers don’t know what they want, so who should educate them.

Owners want to move data from one vendor to another. Some say that the database schema is very similar from some vendors, it wouldn’t be hard to develop a migrator.

One community manager from a large tech brand (she asked me not to blog her company) wants to expose and share CRM data.

Lack of Flexibility
Not having a standard supply of community feature ‘recipes’ are difficult, no cookie cutter approach.

Content and navigation is sometimes not organized in a way of the communities’ need.

Communities software need to be flexible to adapt to the communities needs. For example, if a ‘food’ community shifts their focus from recipes to menus or then to ingredients, the software needs to be able to adapt and change.

How can a platform adapt to emerging technologies, such as twitter.

Who is responsible for understanding the domain of the community.

Lack of User Experience too many community projects

Confusion around Measurement
Would like to have user behavior analytics, current metrics are not easy to use. Telligent showed off their product, right time at the right place.

Difficult to get customer data behavior.

Lack of standardization of community behavior, such as a standard support metric, standard growth metric, etc.

Behavorial metrics are easier to gather but tying back to ROI will be difficult.

Large communities cannot self-manage
Tools need to allow the community to manage it self, with the right features to remove, alert, reduce bad behavior.

High Performance issues rising
Having hosting services in multiple locations is a challenge for communities that need to scale for large enterprises that need high-availability. (Webcrossing and solutionset). Expect this to continue to be an issue as communities become a node in the enterprise software system.

Tagged #ocu2008

Update: Dennis McDonald suggests the solution could be process, not more technology.

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My main coverage area as an Analyst is focusing on Online Communities for Interactive Marketers, I was formerly an enterprise intranet manager at Hitachi Data Systems, so I see where this is heading.

I realize that we’re just at the early days, as many of these systems are deployed by marketing units with little interaction or support from IT. In many cases users are forced to create a new user ID, as these systems are not tied to existing enterprise software.

Thinking towards the future, I realize how important it will be for IT departments to think holistically about social media, especially large areas of customer and prospect congregation. For many marketers, they are graded (paid) based upon the amount of qualified leads that are generated for their efforts, online communities, blogs, and other tools are examples of this. I can already imagine the big consulting shops moving into Fortune 5000 companies with another Enterprise Resource Planning for Social Media projects underway (ERP-SM).

Exactly what would success look like? For one, brands will be able to track, manage, and monitor who enters the community, determine if they are a prospect, customer, partner, or even inactive. Secondly, brands will be able to develop intelligence on how effective communities are for bringing customers closer such as integrating existing social networks like LinkedIn to the corporate intranet. In a theoretical sense, brands could determine which customers have the best reputation, and how to keep and reward them. But perhaps, most importantly, customer experience will improve as companies now have a better understanding of them throughout their life cycle –and beyond.

Caveat: The key to success isn’t just about building systems to ‘capture’ customer registrations and information, it’s about building real relationships empowered by these tools. Any corporation who attempts to enter social media just for the sake of holistic data, or for lead generation only will fail –and perhaps become a case study analysts tout in our powerpoint decks. First recognize the power shift, then understand how this is different that other marketing activities.

The following is a list of companies or vendors that are starting to tie their social media software into CRM systems:

Leverage Software/SalesForce
CEO of Leverage Systems proclaims: mwalsh Leverage Software is integrated with Salesforce.com - has been for 2 years. The integration is currently light, but will deepen. June 3, 2008

SalesForce for Dell/Starbucks?
SalesForce offers IdeaExchange, which powers Dell Ideastorm and My StarbucksIdeas. Being that they are a CRM software vendor that now offers community insight tools, I can only assume that their data is being shared. this is just my assumption, they have not confirmed this for me. June 3, 2008

Hivelive for Serena
Serena’s Mashup Exchange (powered by HiveLive) is an online customer community that is being integrated with lead/CRM systems. Specifically, HiveLive’s LiveConnect Community Platform is integrated with MarketBright’s lead management system and Salesforce.com. Submitted, June 3, 2008 by HiveLive CEO John Kembel via comments

Submit in comments, provide links to qualify
Hoping to see an example of a company that has automated it’s community tools to tie with it’s CRM tools, I’m expecting you to link to a credible source of information, or identify yourself as an employee of a vendor or client. Leave a comment below, or email me if you want to stay confidential or anonymous.

At some point when this list becomes to difficult to manage, or this goes mainstream, we’ll just have to read the comments. If you know of a company that has integrated it’s social media data with a CRM system, please leave a comment.

27 comments

As an analyst at Forrester focused on Social Computing, I’m creating an online catalog for clients that lists out the many players in the White Label Social Networking space, a market I’ve been covering before I even joined the company.

If you work at one of these 100 White Label Social Networking sites (a social network that any company can rebrand) then you’ll want to be included in this catalog. Later, this catalog will help me determine the vendors that will be involved in the Forrester Wave document, which will segment out vendors by strengths.

If you want to participate in this Vendor Catalog, follow these steps:

1) Email Scott Wright swright at forrester.com (Update: Please send to Sarah Glass sglass at forrester.com)with your request: Subject line should be “VPC”
2) He’ll send you instructions, and you can then fill out the short excel sheet.
3) Return it to us by June 4th

If you know someone who works at one of these companies, please forward this post over to them, thanks. I’ve emailed those that I have on hand, but that’s clearly not the entire list.

Update, May 31: Important note about privacy.
Many vendors have expressed concern about how revenue numbers will be used, as many are private companies. The final report will show “price brands” such as 1-5 million, or 6-10 million, just as examples.

It’s important that we place you into these buckets so buyers will know which vendor matches to their particular need. We will use your specific revenue numbers for internal research purposes only, and not publish or share outside of our company. If you still have questions email me at jowyang at forrester.com

Update June 10th
A few days ago, I announced the call for White Label Social Networking vendors (I cover the social networking space at Forrester, for the Interactive Marketer) to complete a spreadsheet and send back to me. Thank you all for completing it, the following companies will be in the Vendor Catalog (A report for Forrester clients):

I used to have a list of vendors who submitted to the report, instead, you can now access the report directly on the Forrester site, or read my background info on my blog.

Of course, each of those vendors who submitted will receive a copy of the report, which will be published in late June 08 or sooner.

If you didn’t submit in time, you’ll have a chance to apply for the vendor catalog, watch this post, and my blog for details.

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My main focus as an analyst is on online communities and social networks, if you’ve the same focus, I highly recommend you attend the Graphing Social Patterns conference, started by Dave McClure. The conferences runs deep into the developer discussions, as well as is blossoming with more and more business and marketing discussions. View my blog posts from previous events, including an interview with Dave.

This upcoming east coast version will have at least a few discussions focused on white label social networks, in fact, I’ve been asked to moderate the panel. I’m really looking forward to this focus on these important vendors, as there hasn’t been any conferences that have done a sole focus on the discussion of corporate communities in the context of these tools.

The upcoming GSP East (The West Coast conference was in San Diego a few weeks back) will be held in June 9-11, 2008 in the Washington, DC area, readers of this blog can register with a discount (Save 15% Use Code: gspe08fo). As a partner, attendees will receive a copy of one of my latest reports on “Online Community Best Practices” so please watch for that

I’m giving away 2 free tickets (valued at $1195, each)

Update: 12 hours later While I encourage additional comments, I”ll be selecting the winners from the first 24 comments. I simply don’t have enough bandwidth to compare and contrast all the great answers. The winners will be contacted and announced on this post.

O’Reilly has offered readers of this blog two tickets, during this week, going to select from the comments, simply answer the following question:

Where you think the future of White Label Social networks is headed over the next 5 years, and why you back up that prediction?

If you’re planning to leave a comment, but know you can’t attend the conference, please indicate so, so someone else who is interested in attending will benefit, thanks.

29 comments

About my use of social media in my research
I use my blog, (and other social media tools like Twitter) as a percentage of my research methodology (around 15%), it’s not the only contributing factor but is an effective way of me using a real-time, global, inexpensive user group. While I do benefit from the flexibility and speed of this format, it also has it’s risks such as lack of identification, biased sample, or often lack of controls. Forrester encourages me to use these tools, it’s helping, and I’m living the space that I cover “Social Computing”.

Social media is only one small sliver of the methodology used to generate the reports.

I’m working on two research reports, the first one is a catalog of the White Label Social Networking vendors (it will list out all the players) then I’ll be segmenting, rating and ranking the leaders in the space by creating a Forrester Wave report. The Wave is a very heavy duty report, and will take me at least 10 weeks to complete, it’s very thorough and will influence buying and funding behavior of the market.

Whenever I ask you for help or conduct research in public, I’ll return the favor and give my findings back to the community, it’s only fair, and encourages you to participate, it’s dang fun too.

1) I asked you what you want
Earlier, I asked me readers (who I know many are in the market for social networks) what do they want in a white label social network vendor.

2) The weighted results are now available.
Thanks to Scott Wright (He’s on Facebook), our Research Associate on our team, he did a quick weighted average based upon responses, they are the following:

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What you said you wanted in a White Label Social Networking Vendor:
The number represents a weighted score, as respondents were asked to prioiritize only three requests, the first response was weighted at “3″ the second weighted a “2″ and the third response weighted a “1″.

Ease of use/customer experience = 22
Customizability = 21
Pricing = 21
Reliability = 12
Integration = 7
Features = 6
Flexibility = 4
Ease of implementation = 4
Company Strategy = 3
Privacy = 3
Reporting = 2
Revenue Drivers = 2
Support = 2
Dependability = 1
Entertainment = 1

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Insights
Quite a few responses around functionality to have a great user experience, be easy to use. As the term “white label” applies (an application you can rebrand and reshape) there’s no surprised that respondents wanted a software package that could easily morph into the look and feel of your corporate site or microsite, we could have easily coupled the 4 results for flexibility in the bucket, if we had a forced drop down survey, (this was open ended, by design) Lastly, pricing was important, as you know the vendors go from free to 20,000 a month, installation services range from 5,000-200,000 fixed costs with varying degrees of service, support, and software features. Many strategists made it very clear that they work at Fortune 5000 companies that reliability was so important, as many brands sell performance based products, their community site could not be down, it’s just embarrassing.

Thanks for responding, although this is only one factor in determining requirements, it’s certainly a good kickstart, and great confirmation.

22 comments

NOTE: The weighted findings are now available on this followup post.

I’m preparing for an upcoming report to help segment out the many vendors in the White Label or Private label social networking industry. Essentially, these companies allow brands to create their own social network (like Facebook) for customers, partners, or employees.

Are you a decision maker for corporate websites? Maybe you’re a web strategist, a web architect, a web marketer, or a web developer in marketing, I want to know what you think is important.

As you select a White Label Social Networking vendor, what THREE criteria are important to you?

Example: Features, Pricing, Support are important to me because: X

If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a comment, sent me an email at jowyang@forrester.com

As with previous times I’ve asked you for your opinion on reports, I do share what the community findings were, and how I’m going to proceed. For what it’s worth, this is just one element that I’ll factor into my research, there’s other methods that I’ll be using to find out the criteria. Thanks for crowdsourcing with me.

Update: A Community Manager (Thanks Tom) are sending me their Request for Proposals (RFP) if you wanted to send that to me, that will really help, I’ll credit you in the final report. I’ll assume this is confidential however, and will ask for your permission before sharing outside of my immediate team.

31 comments

In the late 1990s the CMS invaders deployed their systems at large corporations, as managing web pages using HTML editors wasn’t scalable and non-technical folks needed to publish. In many cases after the invader left, the company’s business teams and technical web teams were stuck cleaning, fixing, enhancing, for years to come.

Unplugging web publishing systems (and community platforms) ain’t easy.

Publishing from Word Docs, ouch.
I was a web manager at a very large corporations, as such, I was the business sponsor for the website, and therefore the tools that were used to publish the website. Often, in most cases, I inherited a legacy CMS system, one that I did not choose, the underpinning structure of the site revolved around it, documents, navigation, ability to edit pages, and look and feel.

This was one of the worst implementations of CMS systems I’d ever seen, the idea was for non-technical people to edit the webpages, so the system would have the ability to check out a ‘word doc template’ filled with macros, publishers could edit the word doc, check it back into the system and a new webpage would appear. fail.

The templates were so complicated as users had to be trained on how to use the word docs, understand the styles, and all the nuances associated with the code. The linking structure linked to a primary key for a document, which also caused confusion. That’s just the publishing process, it gets worse.

The Pains of Content and Structure Coupled
The site was unfortunately designed so the structure would for the most part, remain constant. The structure of the site, and the content were coupled together, and that’s a major problem. As the site would grow and more pages were added to the taxonomy, the system became more and more inflexible. The developers had a very complicated way of managing the pages, the changes took a few days to work as the underlying code had to be changed. The simplest of web changes that you would expected to see from a web CMS system required ongoing developer support –not content changes at the business level.

I’m not going to mention the name of the CMS vendor who provided this less than stellar tool, as I believe the deployment of the system was to blame from the in house technical group –all of which happened before I got there. Whew, I feel better, that’s been pent up inside of me for a few years now.

Thinking forward: Community Systems of today, to be legacy systems tomorrow
As we deploy community solutions that have social media features, are we thinking about in a few years how these legacy systems will be inflexible, don’t talk to our other systems, cobbled together application ware that we loosely couple with our other customer facing web systems?

I also know of many business groups that are deploying community software, often by ‘notifying’ IT that they are doing it, sometimes without thinking about the long term implications of these systems not being able to migrate, talk, or share data with other websites. In many cases, the business sponsor will move on to another role, job, or company, leaving the archaic community platform in the hands of the next web strategist.

Two questions for you:

1) I’d love to hear from you about your CMS horror stories, feel free to leave a comment below, go ahead, vent away.

2) Are you deploying a community platform for your web strategy at your company? What are you doing to plan for the long term 5+ years impacts of this system in regards to the rest of the enterprise web strategy?

35 comments

Social Networks continue to show a strong future of growth.

Two recent Forrester reports published by my colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Oliver Young, both showing the future of social computing for the interactive marketer and for enterprise 2.0 purchasing. A very obvious trend for both of these reports is the growth of budgets by marketers and companies for social networks.

I’m not releasing any new information here, but just highlighting the public data that they both point out:

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Social technology marketers bullish in face of recession

We polled interactive marketers with the following question: “Assuming that the economy is in a recession in the next six months, how would you change your Investments in the following marketing channels?” Over 40% of them indicated that they will increase spending on social networks even in face of a recession during the next 6 months.

Josh writes: “Social networks will get the largest number of increases, over 40% of those using it, along with user-generated content, blogs, and that old standby, email marketing.”

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Forecast: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spend By Technology, 2007 To 2013

In Oliver Young’s report on Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, or read the blog post, and the graph has been published on Read Write Web and ZDnet, Enterprise spending of social computing software (internal and external) his report provided some clear forecasts demonstrating that purchasing in social networking software (like this white label list) will increase, and take the largest segment of the budget.

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Your internal discussion
You should forward these stats to the web strategy teams within your company, and start a discussion answering each of the following questions:

Is your organization of what social networks are (believe me, many aren’t)?

Are you aware of why social networks are so important (talk about trust)?

Is your marketplace using social networks? if so, which ones?

What are you competitors or others in your industry going?

What are people doing in social networking sites in our marketplace?

That’s just the exploratory questions you’ll need to answer, there’s a much large discussion you’ll need to have, after the awareness questions are answered.

I’ve published quite a few posts on social networks, view archives.

14 comments

Many corporations are outsourcing their community platforms
I’ve been talking to more and more companies that are creating their own corporate communities around their brand. For the most part, they lean on the SaaS models that the white label social network, collaboration, or even insight community vendors provide. While it certainly makes sense for marketers to lean on application service providers (it’s all setup, ready to roll, without the hassle of dealing with internal IT) and a decent to moderate price.

Avoid vendor lock in: own your data
One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that customers of these software providers need to protect themselves against vendor lock in, and the best way to do this is to make sure you own your data. The data is the ethos and soul of your community, it’s all the profile content, interaction content, uploaded media, and discussions.

Good for the industry
I’m hearing that most vendors have a clause that says that the client owns the data, but when you look deeper there may be vague descriptions or time limitations –which could really muck things up if a client wants to pull out.

Now why is this important for customers? It keeps them empowered to take their data and switch providers in the rare case a social networking vendor isn’t providing the right service or support.

What’s in it for community software vendors? It holds them at task to make sure they grow, take care of customer needs, and ensure that the relationship –and product roadmap continues to improve.

What should you own?
Customers should be able to pull their data (all of it) at any time with no questions asked, for a period as long as the forum has continued, or to receive periodical backups and exports perhaps monthly or longer. They should be able to get it at will, with no questions or withholdings by the vendor. If someone has a clause that has been written that meets these objectives, please leave a comment below, I’m no lawyer, so I won’t be creating the specific agreement content –but I know what it should meet.

Concerns and considerations
Of course, by owning the data doesn’t necessarily mean that you can quickly switch vendors, as the data will often be structured differently quite a bit of massaging from experts will need to occur, but you can sleep better at night knowing your more in control of what really matters –the ethos of the community.

If you’re a client (or vendor) in this situation, I’d like to hear about what policy you’ve all agreed upon.

Update: In one case, one client sent me an example of a vendor only offering the last 30 days of archived content. Only after they discussed it further with the vendor that they received the details. Vendors need to be more upfront about what this actually means.

16 comments

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Important Update:
Since I started this last in 2007, I’ve since become an industry analyst at Forrester Research, my day job is to officially cover this market. Since then, I’ve published:

August, 2008: Vendor Product Catalog of this market

Oct, 2008: Currently working on a Wave report which will segment 9 vendors suitable for Fortune 5000 Interactive Marketers

It’s fantastic my passion turned into a day job.

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Social Networking goes mainstream
I was recently asked by a buddy to name off some social networking platforms that could be branded or changed as needed (that’s where that term ‘white label’ has come from). It’s somewhat relevant as Om Malik has now asked a rhetorical question if Social Network tools are just a feature of website. Overtime, like blogs, these will ‘normalize’.

What is “White Label” Software?
This is software you can brand and integrate tightly into your existing domain. The user experience should be near seamless, therefore any company can have their own MySpace. Kindly do not submit Social Networking tools that don’t meet this criteria, as the list can extend to hundreds if not thousands of companies.

Related Industries

List of Companies that provide Community Insights, Intelligence, Research and Data

Instant Communities: List of companies that provide Web Collaboration Suites or Platforms

The List
Here’s a list of Social Networking platforms, or suites that you could take and rebrand, if you know of any others, please leave a comment (many of the following are from those that left comments, like Gideon who left quite a few links). Not sorted in any particular order:

BlogTronix
I met Vassil, the CEO, I think it has a chance of giving Sharepoint a run for it’s money given it’s Intranet type features

Sharepoint
Microsoft’s collaboration suite is getting social networking tools for it’s 2007 version, I’m waiting for Microsoft to call me to do a demo.

Five Across
SF company just acquired by Cisco

Community Server
I was looking at this while at a previous role, this is what the famous Channel 9 was built on, as well as Dell 1to1 and Xbox

PeopleAggregator
I’m having dinner with Marc Canter tonight of Broadband Mechanics, I’ll be video interviewing him to learn about his “white-label MySpace-in-a-Box”

Social Platform
Just saw this one, looks pretty interesting. (Update: Feb 2008, now acquired by ONEsite)

SiteLife from Pluck
Pluck already has some other products this could be interesting.

Affinity Circles
This seems to have quite a few educational clients, interesting.

Kick Apps
White label hosted version.

Web Crossing
Social networking and collaboration suite.

Crowd Factory
“Platform that allows you to create a social network site similar to MySpace”

CollectiveX
Doesn’t appear to be a white label, but it’s certainly a Social Network, pretty interesting.

ElggSpaces
“Elgg Spaces allows you to create social networks for your organisation. You decide if the network is private or public.”

Me.com
“Build your own community with SNAPP! It’s as easy as point and click”

Onesite
“Customized white-label social networking partnership solutions for large media, entertainment, and community brands.”

PHPfox
Looks like it has some of the open source apps I’ve used before glued together for a social network. I wonder if this will be a dedicated feature available to most web hosts.

Select Minds
“SelectMinds pioneered corporate alumni programs over 7 years ago and continues to push the boundaries of technology in this industry to provide corporate social networking solutions that help our clients and their current and former employees build and maintain the professional relationships that drive success.”

Small World Labs
“Small World Labs provides the design, implementation, and hosting services for your online social or professional network.”

Social Network Server
“Our platform creates two versions of your site,
one for the Web, and one for mobile phones.”

Sparta Social Networks
“We are a full-service social network solutions company, specializing exclusively in the social network arena. ”

Phpizabi
“With literally thousands of websites powered by PHPizabi including everything from simple friends sites to the most complex networking super sites out there.”

Leverage Software
“…suite of functionality which includes personal profile pages, people-matching, blogs, chat, polling, rss, discussion groups, file sharing, widgets, targeted advertising, and robust customer and community analytics…”

Going On
“Organizations of all sizes can use GoingOn to build interactive communities around their most important initiatives and benefit from the open and compatible “network of networks” environment.”

Momo
“Got a brand? Build your community today and start generating incremental revenue from user generated content..”

Drupal
“Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.”

Awareness (formerly iUpload)
“At the core of the Awareness solution is an on-demand social media platform that combines the full range of Web 2.0 technologies – blogs, wikis, discussion groups, social networking, podcasts, RSS, tagging, photos, videos, mapping, etc. – with security, control, and content moderation. Awareness builds these features into complete communities for companies, or customers use the Awareness API and widgets to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their own web properties.”

HayStack
“Haystack gives businesses the ability to build social networking capabilities into their websites, encouraging customers and sales reps to create more personal connections. Haystack can also be used to help individuals within organizations connect with each other.”

OmniFuse
“We specialize in rapid creation and adoption of online social networks using our FUSION platform. FUSION combines social networking software with consumer generated media technology to provide a marketing and community building tool for brands, organizations, and other verticals.”

Mzinga (Acquired Prospero, March 2008)
“We enable organizations to easily, quickly, and cost-effectively develop branded, integrated communities and social networks comprised of message boards, blogs, ratings, and chats and to manage them using a single, intuitive platform.”

LiveWorld
“Liveworld builds, operates, and moderates social networks and online communities with a difference that creates real solutions to meet real business goals. We are distinguished by these advantages”

Userplane
“Userplane is the premier provider of communication software for online communities. Five hosted web apps comprise the application suite – each adding core, must-have features to thriving websites. The apps are robust yet lightweight, cross-platform with no user installation, and customizable for a site’s specific needs.”

Ning
“Ning is the fast and free way to create custom Social Websites!”

ThePort
“Grow a community and extend your members’ visit to your site. Provide robust social networking tools to stimulate community interaction and foster word-of-mouth.”

Joomla
“Joomla! is used all over the world to power everything from simple, personal homepages to complex corporate web applications.”

eFriends by Altrasoft
“…is an online social networking software that allows you to start your own site just like Friendster and MySpace. The E-Friends software allows members to connect to people in their personal networks and community, creating a new online interactive resource that is based on a trusted network of friends and associates on the internet.”

intronNetworks
Complete graphic and content customization
“Can be attached via web services to any database. User Features include ability to interactively search and filter results of matches out of 1000’s of users in seconds. ” (From comments as I can’t copy and paste any text as the site is in flash)

DZOIC
“start your own social networking portal? If so, then you have just found what you were looking for. Feature Rich User End, Advanced Admin Console, Paid Membership Integration, Flash Instant Messenger and Chat, Fulfeatured Modules”

Boonx
“Use flexible and powerful community software and implement your brilliant idea in real life. Build a community site using Dolphin, and enhance it with Ray and Orca.”

World Web (in German)
I can’t confirm this site meets the criteria, since I don’t speak German

Dave Networks
“provider of an integrated video distribution and social community platform designed to ignite brands.”

Village Engine
“We created a social networking technology as we felt that there were no really good software out there.”

Neighborhood America
“The Trusted Leader in Social Networks for the Enterprise”

Movable Type
Recently announced social features and APIs

Lithium Technologies
Successful Customer Communities

Group Members International
“Outsourced White Label Enterprise Level Hosted and Managed Social Networking Community Platform”

Vibe Capital
“Vibe Capital builds Web 2.0 community software solutions for vertical market sectors”

Social Groupware
“Social GroupWare is an approach to create a Free on-line platform for Social Networking with the most known success story as Business Networking Club of Milan, Italy- http://www.milanin.com”

World Dating Partners
“We build your brand… not ours. Earn the highest income possible with your own branded or white label site. A Free solution to fit your ideas, plans and financial expectations”

Kwiqq
“Kwiqq.com enables online communities for travel, media and football. Our product provides a complete social networking solution ‘out of the box’ and is fully customisable.”

Go Lightly
“GoLightly provides communication and collaboration solutions for community-minded organizations. Our social networking tools give your members the ability to interact with you and each other in powerful new ways.”

Atlassian Confluence
“Confluence is an enterprise wiki that makes it easy for your team to collaborate and share knowledge. Confluence - The Enterprise Wiki. Adding, sharing and finding content has never been easier. These benefits come with all the additional features needed to make it a part of your business:

conVerdge
“ConVerdge is a social media, networking and community building specialist. We help clients around the globe take advantage of the shifting consumer preferences to connect, communicate and share content online. We have created a superior platform that enables us to white-label our turnkey hosted community solution for portals that want to quickly establish themselves with the best of web 2.0 technologies. With Converdge, we empower both large organizations and small businesses to customize, personalize, target, distribute and monetize their brand by delivering a robust, scalable and reliable solution.”

Rsitez
“Group Networks, Social Networks, Photo Sharing, Blogs, Live Chatrooms, Dynamic Searchable Profiles, Videos, Articles, Events, Calendar, Forums, Jobs Database, Private Email, Instant Messenger (IM), user generated content and more.”

Pringo
“Pringo Networks offers a complete social networking and media sharing platform allowing your company to effectively build an integrated online community around your existing user base. Pringo Networks provides the power and flexibility of state-of-the-art social network solution on your site. With features surpassing the leading popular networks, the Pringo technology can offer you and your audience the same functionality as MySpace, YouTube, Tribe.net, Bebo.com and then some!”

FriendSite
Your own Sub-domain. With our social network site, you simply add a sub-domain (an A record) to your website, and this can be whatever your choose… http://members.yourdomain.com, http://community.yourdomain.com, etc.. or even your own dedicated domain name - your choice.

SixApart
“Extends blogging and social media platform to user-generated content in internal and external communities. Movable Type Community Solution (MTCS), a package of social media features built on top of the popular Movable Type 4 platform. The Movable Type platform powers many signature websites and blogs around the world, from the Washington Post to the Huffington Post, from General Motors to Nissan Motors, and from Boeing to BoingBoing.”

Satmetrics (Formerly Informative)
“Marketing 2.0 is about digital democracy and the wisdom of crowds – where prioritized content trumps mass media; and where collaboration and communities of customers drive growth and innovation. Informative provides interactive market solutions that engage customers and identify their top priorities.”

Mixxt
“Easily create a social network that looks, works and feels exactly as you want it to”

Plone
“Plone is a ready-to-run content management system that is built on the powerful and free Zope application server. Plone is easy to set up, extremely flexible, and provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities, web sites, extranets and intranets.”

Diso (Wordpress)
“DiS