These are all tools within the evaluation powered by Social Software Matrix. It is a selection of important Social Software tools on the market at this time and will be enhanced soon. If you want to be informed about new tools or updates, you can subscribe to our newsletter or RSS feed.
Atlassian Confluence 4.0
| Author | Atlassian |
| Version | 4.0 |
| Link | atlassian.com |
| Similar Solutions | Socialtext, Liferay Social Office |
Starting off as an enterprise wiki that had to try hard to catch up with competitors, Confluence is now leading the pack of enterprise wikis and pushing into the field of top enterprise social software platforms. While networking and communication functionality are meanwhile fully integrated, major improvements have been made concerning the usability of Macros and the editor. Confluence is feature rich and with JIRA integration especially appealing to IT focused companies. To move from “Challenger” to “Leader”, Atlassian still needs to enhance the user experience of Confluence.
blueKiwi 10.5
| Author | blueKiwi Software |
| Version | 10.5 |
| Link | bluekiwi-software.com |
| Similar Solutions | Jive Social Business Software, IBM Connections, |
BlueKiwi is a small but very innovative European vendor of social software. Their social software platform is intended to foster “fruitful conversations” within companies and between companies, partners and customers. The blueKiwi approach, with a focus on networking and discussion, is rather distinct and users may need some time to get used to it. However, if widely adopted, blueKiwi has the potential to serve as a catalyst for innovation and knowledge exchange. BlueKiwi, with its internal messaging service, easy content sharing functionality and ubiquitous discussion features, is a very useful communication platform and can significantly reduce e-mail traffic.
Google Apps Pro + Wave
Google Apps Premier Edition is a package of web-based collaboration services adjusted to enterprise requirements. Arguing that email is and will be at the core of collaboration and communication, the Apps Premier Edition primarily focuses on solving groupware related productivity issues. Around that core functionality, which comes with enterprise security in form of the “postini” service, online document collaboration and lightweight social software capabilities are arranged with Google docs and Google sites. The Google Apps Premier Edition cannot really be compared with other social software products and does not completely match our use cases but Google needs to be evaluated due to their potential to disrupt the market for example with the introduction of Google Wave.
IBM Lotus Connections 3.0
| Author | IBM |
| Version | 3.0 |
| Link | www.ibm.com |
| Similar Solutions | Jive Social Business Software, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 |
The release of the 3.0 version of Lotus Connections in November 2010 was a further step in the strengthening of IBM’s position in the social software market. By including social analytics, simplifying the mobile access for users, optimizing the usability, extending the communities and forum functions and adding new compliance and auditing features IBM further improves and completes its social business suite. Although the suite still suffers to some extent from its fundament of separated social software services, IBM proves with version 3.0 again that it is capable and willing to put it all together. In combination with other (IBM) software, in particular Lotus Quickr and Lotus Sametime, Lotus Connections can be extended to the most complete social software platform on the market.
Jive Social Business Software 5.0
| Author | Jive Software |
| Version | 5.0 |
| Link | www.jivesoftware.com |
| Similar Solutions | Mircosoft SharePoint,
IBM Connections |
Jive is available either as an on-premise solution or an externally hosted SaaS. It is comparably easy to install and supports a wide range of operating systems and databases. Clustering is supported and scalability is reported to be unproblematic also in big company deployments with a couple of ten thousand users. Different languages are supported. With the 5.0 release Jive introduced a powerful activity stream functionality. Besides enhanced e-mail functionality, mobile access is supported broadly – especially interesting is Jives support for typical smart phone and tablet devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad). Connectors for SharePoint and MS Office are available and integrate the products both ways and may solve Jives weakness in file management.
Liferay Social Office
| Author | Liferay |
| Version | Beta SE |
| Link | www.liferay.com |
| Similar Solutions | blueKiwi 2009, Mindtouch 2009, Socialtext |
Liferay Social Office is a pre-built solution combining the social software functionality of Liferay portal. Even if not mature yet, the open-source product Liferay Social Office provides a good platform for collaboration, team-oriented information sharing and informal content sharing. Market awareness and reputation are still low, but Liferay manages to increase adoption by offering Liferay Social Office to their portal customers. The product makes a good start with its broad and solid basis of social software functionality and can be considered an insiders’ tip. The question is whether Liferay as a small open source company has the power to push their product to the point where it moves beyond the status of a niche player.
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2010
| Author | Microsoft |
| Version | 2010 |
| Link | www.microsoft.com |
| Similar Solutions | IBM Connections, Jive Social Business Software |
SharePoint is not originally intended as a social software product, but Microsoft has adhered to the trend of social computing and boosted its latest version of their “all-in-one” portal-collaboration platform with a wide range of social software functionality. In good Microsoft tradition, the latest release comes with a name change from Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server (MOSS) to just Microsoft SharePoint Server (SharePoint). SharePoint 2010 is feature rich and flexible, but also comparably complex. Thus extensive customization and training may be required for a successful implementation. The comparison presented here will focus on collaboration and social software functionality of the product.
Socialtext 4.7.5
| Author | Socialtext Inc., California (USA) |
| Version | 4.7.5 |
| Link | www.socialtext.com |
| Similar Solutions | Atlassian Confluence, Liferay Social Office, Mindtouch |
Socialtext was founded in 2002 and is one of the most experienced and best known vendors of enterprise social software in the market. Their wiki-based collaboration platform is extended by a mature microblogging service and most suitable for company internal use. Trying to be very innovative, the focus is on providing extra functionality rather than enhancing core features. The well integrated microblogging tool, the desktop connector and SocialCalc, a spreadsheet editor for wiki-pages, are useful innovations but Socialtext should address their weaknesses in structure and basic functionality. .
Acquia Drupal Commons 2.3
| Author | Acquia |
| Version | 2.3 |
| Link | http://www.acquia.com/ |
| Similar Solutions | IBM Connections, Jive Social Business Software |
Acquia Commons is a free social business suite, which is based on the powerful content management framework Drupal and pushed by a big open source community. Commons is a ready-to-use highly customizable solution for building either internal or external communities. Due to its open source licence the solution is more cost effective than other proprietary vendors. By itself Commons doesn’t include all functionality, but its modular and flexible structure makes it easy for experienced administrators to extend the solution with some of the thousand available additional modules developed from the Drupal community.
This site is spectacular!
I would love to see ThoughtFarmer added to the list of tools/platforms.
What about Traction Teampage. Founded in 1996 was a wiki/blog platform long before these terms became familiar. It’s maturity, strong security features built from the ground up, Thorough Hypertext implementation makes it a strong contender. See
“Traction TeamPage: The One System to Rule It All” -Michael Sampson’s Currents
InfoWorld Review
Hi Ephraim and Rolf,
thank you for your feedback. We have heard about ThoughtFarmer and Traction Teampage, both are very interesting tools and candidates for the Matrix. We are currently optimizing the review/evaluation process which will enable us to continually extend the list of tools covered in the matrix.
Best regards,
Bernd
I may as well be another to make a suggestion. ConcourseConnect is a relatively new entrant for both internal and external communities, but it has been in use for several years. The focus is around directories of information and incorporates blogs/wikis/etc. to create a user-friendly experience. A recent implementation has over 1,000 employees and an open source version is available. For more information or a sandbox please contact me at http://www.concursive.com
Thanks for this nicely created site and please consider this application for inclusion.
- Matt
Thanks for creating this useful site. You should check out the blog posts and reports Jeremiah Owyang has written. He has many more tools covered that you might like to try out too.
And how about Drupal and other open-source platforms? If you have strong developers, these can be much more flexible. I guess they are hard for you to compare as a platform. You should check out Aquia and the FreshNetworks platform.
Charlie
Hi Matt and Charlie,
as Bernd posted two comments before, we are working to enhance the list of tools within the matrix. Furthermore we are working on an extension of Social Software Matrix to give possibility of uploading new tools to every vendor on itself. We expect to have this feature by June 2010. So visit Social Software Matrix againg to see when new feature has been launched.
Cheers Christoph
[...] Gegensatz zu den in der Social Software Matrix bewerteten Tools, können Anbieter im Bereich ihre Produkte selbst einstellen und somit einer Vielzahl von [...]
Hello,
Will you update your matrix with Bluekiwi 2011? It seems they made a lot of enhancements in their product and I’m interested in it.
Regards,
Olivier
Hello Olivier,
at the moment we are working on the update of the Matrix, including the evaluation of the latest version of Bluekiwi. So if you come back in a few weeks, you will see what we found out about it.
Regards,
Jenny
Hello, blueKiwi 10.5 has been out for a couple of months now. Any plans to evaluate it?
Best regards,
Olivier
Hi Olivier, we are busy reviewing it right now!
Due to our plans of a new design and some other improvements we didn’t have the time to evaluate it earlier. Please don’t be disappointed – you’ll be able to compare it in the Matrix shortly!
Here’s a cool free microblogging for sharepoint like twitter http://sharepointmicroblog.codeplex.com
Do you have any plans to evaluate the following: NewsGator, Telligent, Salesforce Chatter, Cisco Quad, and Socialcast.
BTW Great site, very good information…
Hi Ed, what a nice wishlist! :D. I had a look on Chatter this week and also on Quad. Both seem to be interesting, also the other tools. If we have the time we may evaluate some of these.
And do you plan to evaluate http://attini.com as well?
Disclaimer: we implement Attini
Hi Wilco, basically we are oriented on studies of big research institutes like Gartner or Forrester. Only if we find the time we are looking into other tools. Why don’t you enter the tool in the rising vendors section in the meantime? A lot of people are looking there too, if they are searching an alternative tool…
where is Yammer? I can’t find any mention of this segment frontrunner anywhere on your site (??)
Hi, we believe that Yammer is not as extensive as the other tools though I think it can be very useful. As I know it is possible to open rooms in Yammer and more, but we don’t consider it as a social software suite – it’s more a microblogging tool. So the place to be would be the rising vendors section, but the guys Yammer didn’t entered some infos there.
Hi,
Great site! I really like browsing through here. I would love more activity so I have to admit.
A question on the tools you selected: I would like to see Yammer as well as Cubetree/Jam listed here as well. Any thoughts on that?
Also I was wondering when you evaluated MS SharePoint 2010 if you considered the various Social Collaboration AddOn which are available (e.g. Pulse from neudesic or NewsGator)? As we leverage SP 2010 within our company a lot I do see that it lacks quite significant social collaboration features and especially their usability. I would be curious if you considered how intuitive those tools can be used and administered as well.
Regards,
Holger