I had posted on this topic a few days ago but have thought again about how best to present the data from the survey I mentioned. I am therefore reposting the item with the changes included. The earlier version is no longer present.

In the blog posting titled "Social netting—the whats and whys (2)", I mentioned at the end a forthcoming Bloor Research market overview of social networking for business. This is now available, free.

The main focus of the research Carl and I are doing is innovation in social networking for business. We asked companies to tell us what's new from them in these three areas:

• the products or services themselves, such as new technologies or features
• how they deliver their products or services, such as via a 'cloud'
• how their customers are using the product or service.

We got completed forms from 17 relevant companies, about a third of those we contacted. One (Open Text) bought another (Vignette) soon after, leaving 16 sets of results. That's not bad for a first pass and includes companies of various sizes, from IBM down to small businesses. Their customers are similarly varied.

One company that responded but whose details don't appear on the chart or in part 2 is Visible Technologies. Theirs is an interesting offering, consisting of a set of tools to allow companies to oversee, analyse and engage in social networks. One of its main values is in what marketers call sentiment analysis. Visible Technologies refer to "social media listening". Unfortunately, their services don't fit our framework, so with regret we have omitted them.

The other suppliers' responses were mixed. Most were informative and to the point. At the other extreme, some read like copy-and-paste jobs from corporate literature. We've therefore supplemented what all the respondents said with research from elsewhere.

Product and service innovation
Each entry has a numerical rating that reflects our assessment of its product or service's innovativeness. Part of the usefulness of software lies in the way it comes to the user organization, so innovation in this aspect is included in the score. The top score possible is 5.0.

Note that innovation is not the same as invention. Innovating is doing something new, not just dreaming it up and patenting it (otherwise Xerox PARC would feature in many answers!) Also, we're interested only in useful innovation, that has practical value rather than being change for the sake of it.

Another consideration is that innovativeness is not an absolute. Features that might be only moderately advanced in a new product from a small start-up company would be seen as highly innovative in an established product from a large, enterprise-class supplier.

A new company is obliged to offer something innovative to gain funding and customers. Existing suppliers of enterprise software are judged on other matters as well, such as architectural continuity, product support and sustainability. Our assessments are therefore relative to the context.

You will see that there are no low scores for innovativeness. This is unsurprising, as only those companies who see themselves as innovators have responded.

Fitness for the purpose
We have also rated each entry by its likely fitness for application in a target user organization. This is an imaginary large corporate body, with a wide range of needs that span multiple countries and involve the use of several human languages.

The model organization has the competence and confidence to specify, install, use and manage the product well but will need support in all its operating countries. This could come direct from the supplier or through trading partners. Again, 5.0 is best.

Almost any product or service can be used within a large organization or part of it. By "fitness", we mean how able it is—or soon will be—to meet the typical expectations for enterprise software. Those encompass such matters as data quality and quantity, security, compliance, reliability, and depth and breadth of interaction. They also include close integration with corporate data and processes, and single sign-on. 'Skinning' and branding also appeal to corporate buyers (but not in a cattle herding way).

Some suppliers, and users, might argue that all this is too much of a burden to place on a social networking product or service whose essence is ease and lightness. We would agree, if social networking were only ever to deal with discretionary or informal information or have local or external application. Once it starts being expected to handle corporate data or regarded as an enterprise-wide service, these requirements will make themselves felt.

This is not bad news. As IBM and others show, Web 2.0 tools (mashups, etc.) allow suppliers or user organizations to combine consumer-level ease of use and adaptability with industrial-strength security and robustness. Attractiveness and corporate fitness are not antithetical.

What we mean by social networking
A quick reminder that we see social netting products and services as offering most or all of the following:

1. Publishing tools—blogs, wikis, texting, tweeting, podcasting, videocasting, content feeds, etc.
2. Interpersonal communication and collaboration—instant messaging (IM), email and conferencing (text, voice or video), shared editing. Groupware, in effect
3. Searching and navigating—syndicated search, content maps, user directories and maps, machine- and user-created categorisation (bookmarks, tags and ratings)
4. Community creation and management—forum moderation, content promoting, invitation issuing, etc.
5. Tools for managing and extending the system.

A major part of the ethos of social networking is allowing personal choice and group direction-setting. These are matters of implementation and system control as much as of the products or services themselves and are hard to envisage within some organisations.

Looking at the results
Here below is a chart of our ratings of respondents' offerings. Some of the data points are moved slightly away from their true positions for readability. Click on the chart to see it larger.

Social networking products and services assessed

The results are interestingly varied:

• only two companies—IBM and EMC—combine offerings that are demonstrably of enterprise strength with, in their context, significant innovation
• the most innovative offerings, again in context, come from Mzinga, Socialtext and ThoughtFarmer but all have yet to show their readiness for use in our target organization
• Traction Teampage scores highly on innovativeness but is not suited to enterprise use in the fuller sense
• DreamFace Interactive is similarly innovative but looks even less ready for corporate adoption
• Open Text is potentially strong in both dimensions but has few large users to boast of. Its newly-acquired Vignette product range has yet to be integrated
• three offerings—from Atlassian, Jive and Novell—occupy what we think of the up-and-comers' space. They are moderately innovative but need the evidence of some successful large installations to convince of their enterprise strength
• the remaining 5 companies' offerings are middle-sitters, with plenty of scope to improve in either direction.

Applying the results
Our choice of specimen organization favours software and services suited for working behind the firewall as well as outside it. This does not in any way belittle the usefulness of those offerings designed only for outward-looking use—it is a vital part of what social netting can do—but does bias our results.

Similarly, we concentrate on systems for large companies and have assessed products and services accordingly. Some of the software given a modest rating on corporate fitness could be well suited for use by a smaller organization or a division of a large enterprise.

Finally, please note that the results of our survey are not a general judgement on any company or its products or services. We have looked at only two of the many aspects that need considering when specifying a potential solution.

Next
Part 2 gives the details on which we based our assessments.