Social Networking and Collaboration Platforms Lead the News
By Hane, Paula J
NewsBreak Update I wrote about several new initiatives in the last issue that enabled social networking and fostered collaboration. Now there seems to be no end in sight for such news. Over the last month, my inbox has been filled with information about new tools, new sites, upstart companies, and cooperative deals. With the current economy in the U.S., some people say that “frugal is the new black.” For me, social networking and collaboration are the “new black” in the online arena.
Microsoft Research launched SearchTogether for collaborative searching. The beta version of SearchTogether lets users work together on a search process, share the work, and explore results simultaneously. Greg Notess provided the details in his NewsBreak on the new browser add-on: “While Google may be working on something similar, Microsoft Research’s SearchTogether is available now and may well offer a technology preview of what types of future collaborative searching may start to be incorporated into search and social networking sites.”
2collab, the research collaboration platform for scientists from Elsevier (first released in beta a year ago and officially launched in November 2007), announced the results of a survey asking researchers about the role of social media in their professional lives. I found this most interesting: Comments from survey respondents identified several issues that need to be addressed before the research community accepts it, namely, the need for specialist tools, higher security, and validation of users. However, these concerns were not seen as insurmountable obstacles, and many anticipated “tremendous potential” for social media. [For more on the survey, turn to page 34. For details on 2collab, see the NewsLink Spotlight, "Elsevier Creates Social Spaces for Researchers" at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=40102. - Ed.]
GlobalSpec reports that its collaborative online community for engineers, scientists, technical researchers, and related professionals, launched 2 years ago and dubbed CR4, now receives some 250,000 unique visitors each month. Members are making 700 to 800 posts per day, sparking deep “problem-solution” conversations.
Collaboration for Libraries
We’re also seeing interesting developments in libraries. We’re waiting for public availability of BiblioCommons, a social discovery system for libraries with cataloging by librarians and patrons. According to the site, “BiblioCommons’ services are designed to enable rich connections around library collections-connections between our users and the content, conversations, and communities they’re most interested in.” The first release from the Toronto- based software company was in a closed beta with Charter Subscribers (Provincial Library Services Branch of British Columbia and Knowledge Ontario). At press time, the system had just gone live at the public library in Oakville, Ontario, a city near Toronto.
LibraryThing for Libraries lets libraries involve their patrons and enhance their catalogs with reviews, ratings, and tags. It works with existing OPAC/ILS systems. The Danbury (Conn.) Library was the first to put LibraryThing for Libraries on its live catalog; many more libraries of all kinds-public, academic, and special-have joined as well. LibraryThing for Libraries builds off the popular personal- and social-cataloging site, LibraryThing. Since 2005, LibraryThing members have added more than 26 million books and 34 million tags.
Microsoft TownSquare
At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last June in Boston, Chris Pratley, general manager of Microsoft Office Labs, shared some details about TownSquare, Microsoft’s internal social networking project. TownSquare is an enterprise newsfeed that allows users to receive news about managers, friends at work, and colleagues all in one location. Its layout is similar to Facebook (in which Microsoft has an investment). The prototype project provides useful information automatically based on who employees communicate with and data public within the company. TownSquare aims to provide information workers with up-to-the-minute information that can help employees improve productivity and work efficiently. A company representative says that while the team initially sent out invites to a few colleagues, the site now has more than 8,000 users. TownSquare is a research prototype. The lab is focused on testing and improving the technology concept and reports that a plan has not yet been devised for if or how to bring the technology out of the internal testing phase.
Other social networking vendors integrate with Microsoft SharePoint, including Awareness, Inc.; Connectbeam, Inc.; WorkLight, Inc.; and more. Several of these partners announced new capabilities at the conference.
Social Networking Tools Reports
Two consulting companies recently issued reports of interest on social networking tools. Outsell, Inc. announced the release of its CEO Topics report, “Social Communities & Expert Networks in B2B.” The report names 10 companies to watch in this space: ALMExperts.com; Doostang, Inc.; InnoCentive, Inc.; Information Technology Toolbox, Inc.; LECG, LLC; Linkedln Corp.; NowPublic Technologies, Inc.; Sermo; XING; and Yelp.
The “Enterprise Social Software Report 2008″ released by CMS Watch evaluates 20 major social software suppliers, based on extensive technology research and customer interviews. The 300-page report also provides a breakdown of common usage scenarios to help customers select the right technology for their enterprises. Social software technology categorie s range from platform offerings (from companies such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google), to stand- alone suites (from Jive Software; Traction Software, Inc.; Awareness; and others), to viable pureplay blog and wiki tools, public networks (Facebook), and white-label community services (Ning, Pluck, and Lithium).
Trampoline Systems, a provider of enterprise social intelligence tools, studied enterprise social networking, surveying 111 businesses in the U.S. and the U.K. The company’s research revealed that 88% of businesses are eager to start using social networking, although many are looking for more business functionality than in consumer social networks. Some key findings include the following:
* Eighty-four percent of businesses reported that social networking would help with sharing knowledge and expertise with colleagues across the organization and 68% would like help with finding relevant specific information.
* Sixty-nine percent want to interact with colleagues they don’t know.
* The top concern of businesses is that social networks are too separate from other IT systems, requiring employees to enter information about themselves into the social network and distracting them from their work.
Search Engine Update
Despite the seemingly endless MicroHoo saga, as Yahoo! spurned its determined suitor, Microsoft decided to turn its attention elsewhere. It bought the semantic search engine Powerset, which lets users search Wikipedia using a natural language query. Microsoft is likely to use it to improve search relevancy and compete more effectively with Google.
Microsoft continues to pull back from products and services that it apparently deems aren’t core to its mission-and that haven’t proven as successful as competitors’ offerings. After halting its book digitization and search project, it announced it would discontinue its Windows Live Expo service as of July 31, 2008. Expo was a free social classifieds listing service that included merchandise, housing, events, jobs, and personals.
But it’s reaching out in other directions. Microsoft said it expanded an ad agreement with the social networking site Facebook and would begin providing web search services and associated ads by the end of the year. (Microsoft already has a small ownership stake in Facebook.)
Adobe released technology to Google and Yahoo! that enables them to crawl and index Adobe Flash (SWF) files (used on interactive websites). That means any text or links in a Flash application can now be indexed. This will open up millions of Flash files to search. TechCrunch reports that Google is rolling it out while Yahoo! is working on it. But ranking in search results could still be an issue. Image and video files are not yet included.
hakia, the semantic search engine, announced that it has increased its health and medical search coverage by adding more than 10 million abstracts from PubMed, a medical database maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Using its QDEX technology and semantic capabilities, hakia makes it easier to find current and historical medical and health documents dating from the last 5 years. PubMed searches can be conducted at http://pubmed.hakia.com, as part of hakia’s medical search at http://medical.hakia.com, or as part of the general search engine itself at www.hakia.com.
Another semantic search technology vendor also entered the health space: Cognition Technologies, Inc. introduced Semantic MEDLINE, a free service that lets users employ a natural, conversational sentence structure to search the MEDLINE database. It uses Cognition’s Semantic Map technology to “understand” the meaning behind words, phrases, and idioms. Scoofers is a new social search engine that launched in the U.S. and the Netherlands. It provides search results based on the knowledge of experts at social networking websites. It claims that the combination of automatic results with social bookmarks leads to more relevant search results. There are now four vertical Scoofers: travel, electronics, party and dining, and fashion shopping. It uses Google Custom Search and the content on Digg, delicious, Technorati, Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and more.
AOL launched version 2.0 of its social news portal site called Propeller. Headlines from the service are integrated into AOL and AOL News. Members post links to stories, and users can comment, vote, and share. Editorial staff moderates the site “with the help of the Propeller Scouts.” I wasn’t impressed by my first look, but time will tell.
Last March, Ask.com’s new CEO, Jim Safka, announced a new strategy to refocus the company’s products and marketing around its core users, while concentrating on searches framed as questions. (See our NewsBreak at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp ?ArticleId=41196.) Many of us bemoaned the loss of Ask.com as a general search engine. Over the summer, Safka talked with a number of search experts, trying to convince them that Ask.com was still a general search engine, focused on core search, and able to compete with Google. He pointed to new freshness and relevancy of results. So far, most search experts have not been convinced yet. For details, see Barry Schwartz’s comments at http:// searchengineland.com/080626084554.php, or blogger Lisa Barone’s comments at www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2008/06/ ask_core_search.html.
Then came word that Ask.com was migrating off its mapping platform and outsourcing the mapping to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform-undoubtedly to cut costs. It is now being used at maps.ask.com as well as Ask City (business search at city.ask.com) and in Ask’s Smart Answers. YellowPages.com, Superpages.com, and WhitePages.com also use Virtual Earth. The model is to let Microsoft invest in the infrastructure, imagery, data updates, and more, and let the portals develop the applications.
With Ask.com scaling back and struggling to find a workable strategy and Yahoo! distracted and in disarray, it looks like Google and Microsoft may have a showdown. But will Yahooi’s new open strategy spawn an army of niche partners to nibble away at Google? For details on Yahoo! BOSS (Build your Own Search Service), see the NewsBreak at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/ nbReader.asp?ArticleId=49963.
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Links
http://research,microsoft.com/searchtogether
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?Articleld=49627 [NewsBreak on Microsoft SearchTogether]
www.2collab.com
http://cr4.globalspec.com
http://bibliocommons.com
www.librarything.com/forlibraries
www.danburylibrary.org
www.outsellinc.com
www.cmswatch.com
www.trampolinesystems.com
www.powerset.com
www.facebook.com
www.cognition.com
www.semanticmedline.com
www.scoofers.com
www.propeller.com
Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of MewsBreaks. Her email address is phane@infotoday.com. Send your comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com.
Copyright Information Today, Inc. Sep 2008
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