Salesforce.com built a billion-dollar company by allowing companies to ditch their CRM software and bringing CRM to the cloud. Now it has its sights set on perhaps an even bigger feat: bringing social media to the enterprise.

Yesterday, the company announced that it will be launching a new service called Salesforce Chatter in 2010. Think of it as Facebook for the enterprise: a social networking service for companies with an application platform to boot.

Enterprise social networking is one of those 'no-brainer' concepts, and for that reason Salesforce.com isn't the first company to try cracking the enterprise social networking nut.

It's a tough nut to crack, however. For obvious reasons, many businesses are tepid when it comes to anything involving the two words 'social networking'. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et. al. may be employee favorites but most employees aren't using these popular social networks for work purposes when they log on at 10 am. Social networks have also created a number of risks for businesses, from the possibility that confidential information could be posted to the possibility that employee conduct could embarrass the company.

So while the application of social networking technology to the workplace seems like a no-brainer, consumer-facing social networks are often more likely to become a nuisance or threat to businesses than they are to serve as a viable hub for constructive employee interaction. That makes social networking in general a tough sell for many companies.

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Tags: social networking, technology, digital media, innovation

Categories: News

Some companies are helping. In May, the Edelman public relations firm rolled out an interactive desktop system that trains employees in social networking online -- at their own pace.

"In our industry, it's quite critical today," said Laura Smith, managing director of U.S. human resources at Edelman in the District. Those who advance in hands-on use of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are elevated to another rank in the training system.

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Tags: technology, skills, social learning, web 2.0

Categories: News

By Jill Aitoro at GovExec.com

Leading government into the land of wikis, blogs and social media isn't easy.

Even Sean Dennehy, whose title is evangelist for the intelligence community's widely lauded collaboration Web site Intellipedia, was initially skeptical.

"Cal Andrus spoke to a technology advisory group that I was a part of about wikis and blogs, and we all said, 'This guy is crazy,' " Dennehy recalls. Andrus, who worked in the application services office at the CIA, had won the intelligence community's Galileo Award in 2004 for his white paper on using the Internet to boost information sharing.

Despite a preconceived notion that Web 2.0 technologies had little place in the intelligence community, Dennehy fiddled online with the build-as-you-go encyclopedia, Wikipedia, to see where Andrus was coming from. Sifting through the discussion and history tabs for each entry, he quickly saw similarities in the online community's style of collaboration and the way he and his colleagues at the CIA worked as intelligence analysts. Both approaches involved a lot of dialogue and building on the ideas of others. The big difference, though, was information sharing on the Web required only a few mouse clicks.

"Everyone has a light bulb moment," Dennehy says. "That was mine." He went back to Andrus to ask how the intelligence community could get this sort of wiki up and running. In 2006, Intellipedia officially launched. Three years later, the application boasts about 5,000 contributions and 15,000 edits per day.

But getting there hasn't been easy.

"It's bloody hard, because every inclination in government is to close these types of things down," says Don Burke, officially known as the Intellipedia doyen, who spearheaded the initiative with Dennehy. "People want some magical formula to innovation, but it's not that predictable. They just need to fight like hell."

Caught in the Middle

The Obama campaign built an election platform on Web 2.0 technologies using social media sites, streaming video and blogs to gain support from the country's digitally savvy populace. Building upon that success, President Obama now is driving those initiatives into the federal government. The White House has launched a number of collaborative tools and Web sites to better serve citizens, including Recovery.gov, which tracks how economic stimulus funds are allocated and spent. The president also leveraged the popularity of the video-sharing service YouTube to provide live online access to his speeches.

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Happy Learning!

Tags: web 2.0, technology, federal government, social media sites

Categories: Government

New York (AP) -- When it comes to workplace relationships, the general advice is to keep your distance. After all, friendships can be tested by a number of different issues in the workplace. But the people we see every day at work often become our closest friends. It's no wonder, we spend roughly half of our waking hours with them.

So what's the secret to balancing work and friendships, especially when things get rocky?

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Tags: workplace, relationships, ethics, technology

Categories: News

It is a rare criticism of elite American university students that they do not think big enough. But that is exactly the complaint from some of the largest technology companies and the federal government.

At the heart of this criticism is data. Researchers and workers in fields as diverse as bio-technology, astronomy and computer science will soon find themselves overwhelmed with information. Better telescopes and genome sequencers are as much to blame for this dataglut as are faster computers and bigger hard drives.

While consumers are just starting to comprehend the idea of buying external hard drives for the home capable of storing a terabyte of data, computer scientists need to grapple with data sets thousands of times as large and growing ever larger. (A single terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes and could store about 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.)

The next generation of computer scientists has to think in terms of what could be described as Internet scale. Facebook, for example, uses more than 1 petabyte of storage space to manage its users’ 40 billion photos. (A petabyte is about 1,000 times as large as a terabyte, and could store about 500 billion pages of text.)

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Tags: training, technology, generations, trends

Categories: News

Are social networking sites causing a decline in teen social skills? I think so. A majority of teens spend at least an hour a day on some kind of social networking site.

According to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 87 percent of 12 to 17-year-olds use the Internet daily and more than half of those teens use social networking sites.

Although I use sites such as MySpace and Facebook, I do feel they can cause teens to lose valuable social skills that can be gained by interacting in a more personable way. If you're creating a virtual personality for yourself behind a computer screen, you are not showing people the real you.

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Tags: social media, technology, web 2.0, web 3d

Categories: News

CHICAGO (PRNewswire) -- Bersin & Associates, the only research and advisory firm focused solely on enterprise learning, talent management, and talent acquisition, today announced the release of its latest study, Talent Management Systems 2010: Market Realities, Implementation Experiences, and Solution Provider Profiles. The study is the most comprehensive market review and buyers' guide for talent management software systems.

Despite the recession, Bersin & Associates' research finds that the talent management systems market has thrived over the last year as vendors have seen significant growth in adoption. Based on market data and information provided by vendors, Bersin & Associates projects that the market will expand by 15 percent over the coming year.

Read the full release here.

Tags: talent management, technology, software, trends

Categories: News

The new office marks not only an important milestone in Giunti Labs' North American presence, but also demonstrates its commitment to providing state-of-the-art educational technology products and services to a broad range of clients in the corporate, public and educational sectors.

"During the last year, Giunti Labs has experienced a strong growth in North America," commented José Grade, president of Giunti Labs. "We have a growing number of large clients. To be able to fulfil the growing market needs, we have enlisted some important recruits and, consequently have opened this new office in Atlanta."

Anthony Suess, Director of Solution Deployment, Giunti Labs North America, commented: "Organizations in North America are increasingly realizing the tremendous value of an investment in their employees and their continual professional development. During the past few years the market has reached a level of maturity that has sparked a strong demand for elearning solutions.

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Tags: technology, performance management, business news

Categories: News

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 11, 2009 -- Managers and supervisors don't have much time to get the coaching they need regarding important workplace communications. iPocket Coach, available in the Apple App Store and iTunes, helps managers find the right "words of wisdom." All a manager needs is an iPhone or iPod Touch and a coach is at their fingertips.

iPocket Coach offers managers guidance across eight categories including conflict, development, feedback, interviewing, performance, promotions, rewards, and termination. Each category is supported with key takeaways that cover what's most important. The best part of iPocket Coach is the relevance of the content to real work situations.

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Tags: technology, performance management, business news, communication

Categories: News

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) September 4, 2009 -- People looking for a faster and more efficient online search experience can now turn to Searchwiki, a new social search engine bridging the gap between searchers and relevant results. Unlike other search engines, in addition to spidering major search engines like Google and MSN, Searchwiki spiders social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to generate additional search results. Searchwiki is also the only search engine that offers redemption points, giving users the opportunity to receive gifts just for searching, commenting and posting reviews.

"Searchwiki technology improves on existing search engines by enabling vertical, community site and Web searches to be initiated from any Web site," says Adam Goldenberg of Searchwiki. "Searchwiki's strength is in its community appeal and dynamic social search cloud. Collaboration between groups of people with similar interests using a Searchwiki will quickly produce much more relevant and tailored results for a common group than a generic search engine would."

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Tags: social media, technology, web 2.0

Categories: News