Of Dashboards and Videos

In my sometimes frustrating effort to stay on top of new social web technologies, I've come across a few more that could have value for enterprise social web teams.

As more organizations move beyond the single-Twitter-and-Facebook account stage, their community managers come up against the problem of managing a bunch of social accounts. Paratus Communications points to a couple of tools that might come in handy.

The first is LiveGo, a social dashboard with its main point of difference being "its integration with MSN Messenger and other IM services, living side-by-side with Twitter and Facebook." Paratus concludes that "If you like instant chatting, this might be one for you. Find out more about LiveGO here."

In the same post, Paratus suggests taking a look at geeje which it says "could be one of the most useful tools we’ve seen in a while, especially if you want to keep your eye on specific competitors. geeje.com works by creating personalised feeds of brands / people you want to follow closely. All you need to do is set up your brand / person tab, add the URL feeds you’re interested in and geeje keeps them updated in real-time so you don’t miss a thing. Very handy!"

One that I am going to start playing with is Screenr a web-based recorder that helps you create instant screencasts. It is as simply as clicking the record button on the site's home page then "capture your screen and voice, and share the link" over Twitter. You can also download the file as an MP4. It could make the job of juicing a blog or website easier.

Technology Stuff

I was asked today to talk about any 'new' social web assets that the organization I was meeting with should consider. It's a common question from clients and colleagues alike. Partly it's a function of curiosity and partly I think a belief there is a social web object somewhere that will be the silver bullet for every enterprise social web challenge. Of course, that's not likely. The cheap or free platforms here aren't a panacea for anything; but they're worth taking a look at.

Identi.ca

Unlike Twitter, identi.ca is open source micro-blogging service with the goal of providing "fair and transparent" service that preserves users' autonomy. The data is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

The goal here is autonomy -- you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don't like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

Chatter.com

From the folks at salesforce.com, Chatter.com allows you to create a private and secure social network for your company. The consultancy I work for uses Yammer.com. I can't see much difference between the two. Maybe someone from either company will post a comment explaining the dissimilarities.

Pulse CMS Pro

This one could be really useful for small companies. It is a WYSIWYG editor that lets you edit any part of an existing website in, so it claims, five minutes. The basic model is free, and the pro version about $20.

Summify

From two Romanian "hackers and entrepreneurs" (@mirceapasoi and @cgst) comes Summify which "distills your social feeds, boiling it down into a summary of the top five or ten most important and relevant stories."

Play around with them and see if they are worth dropping into your quiver of web tools.