Social messaging enables users to interact and share information. It includes micro blogging and micro sharing, but the most important aspect is to provide and receive information. Users can collect it as in passing.

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Social Messaging – A Definition

The social messaging study driven by n:sight arrived at the next stage. During the last days we got the input from ESME , bluekiwi, Flowr and Communote. All of these vendors offer their solution as SaaS (software as a service) and server installation.

SaaS is a good option for small companies or testing with small groups. You just need an account and you can start. Bigger companies will switch to the server installation, when they will start running social messaging with the all employees.

I made the experience on my workshops that’s much better to show something than explain the features. SaaS can also be used to start with your group and present the result to your management afterwards. Especially, if you use an open source solution like ESME or if it’s a free offer for small groups available like bluekiwi, Communote and Flowr provides.

All solution provides several options to do status updates. I like especially the option to create polls offered by bluekiwi and Flowr. It’s a nice way to ask colleagues about their opinion.

Tagging is a very important function to organize the content. It’s needed for any Enterprise 2.0 application. All four solutions provide tagging for status updates. A useful function is auto suggestion related to tags like offered by bluekiwi, Flowr and Communote.

API and other interfaces as input for status updates are available by all solutions. So it will be easy to connect other systems. Communote provides a XMPP interface to connect messaging solutions like ICQ or Windows Live Messenger. So it’s easy to integrate chat which is used nowadays in a lot of companies.

I am looking forward to read the next input from other vendors. You will be able to read more details when the study will be ready in September.

Today Twitter is a mainstream application. Millions of people are using it for sharing information and networking, because it’s fast and useful. What does it mean for using social messaging in enterprises?

I think we’ll see the same development like on the web with Twitter. It will work in companies as well. I had the following topics in mind coming to this conclusion.

Simplicity

It’s very easy to use. Just a link and a very short introduction are needed to start. You don’t need training. Simplicity is one reason for a low acceptance threshold.

Fast
Nowadays people expecting news just in time when information appeared. Social messaging is the right tool to meet this requirement. The communication with social messaging is close to real time. Any new topics are spread out immediately.

Getting to the point
The number of characters is limit. It’s not possible to write long prose. So the authors are forces to write short and concisely. The readers are getting quickly the point of the message. Social messaging save time and the content is better.

Networking
A user just need to invite people to follow him/her and a network of people is set up. From that point they can start to share information or to interact with each other.

Company Indicator
Social messaging shows the pulse of the organization. You can easily see which topics are hot. It can be used by the employees not to miss important information or by the management to do the right decisions. It’s like making the kitchenette public.

Notice board
Everybody can write his/her own notice board. It can be used by the CEO or every employee. You just need to take care that the right people follow you or select the right authors to follow.

Several news channels in one
On TV/radio you are able to get information from one channel only at the same time. You need to switch, if you want to get information from several topics. With social messaging you are getting information about all topics you are interested in close to real time. You just need to follow the right guy or to monitor the right terms. A list with most used terms will help to identify new important news

Expert finder
Searching for topics you will easily find people which are writing a regularly about this topic and you can easily check whether they are creating useful content. You can just follow or contact these experts.

Chat
Chat is used in private live by a lot of people or by some companies. It’s really useful to communicate with other people, but the existing tools are not so good chatting with several people at the same time. On social messaging the user can easily decide whether he will chat with the community or with a certain person only. To find older posts is also possible. Older posts are stored locally on chatting tools.

Scalable
The size of the company doesn’t matter. It can be used easily from a company with 5 people or a big group can use it. It’s only a matter of some server capacity and memory.

Social messaging is a real good connector and communicator. It’s probably the best news board which can be used in a company today. We will see it in a lot of companies soon.

We are providing a seminar in Germany about social messaging. Please, use this link for more information:

“Social messaging im Unternehmen”, 13.July 2010 in Frankfurt

I would like to know your optinion. Therefore I created a poll about this topic.
Do you think that social messaging will be the killer application of Enterprise 2.0?