Sunday, April 06, 2008

JIVE's clearspace takes social networking behind the firewall

I've been watching Clearspace as one of those Enterprise products that just might have that something special that finally brings the Web2.0 experience behind the firewall.

R/WW reports tonight that Jive Software is releasing Clearspace2.0 tonight.
The service takes on Microsoft's Sharepoint with a feature set that looks like something many consumer software users would be envious of. USAToday recently said that "Jive Software wants to be the Apple Computer of corporate social networks." The best way to try to describe it may be to say it's like a combination of Facebook, Google Docs, Netvibes/Pageflakes, Meebo and a little bit of Basecamp - for the enterprise. Jive calls itself a "social productivity" service.


Sweet! I love the idea of social productivity. As I, and many others, have said before, "it's about the people, stupid!"

However, if you're used to the likes of kickapps.com and NING and peopleagregator and other "free" offereings, you might get a little sticker shock. But since we're talking about an Enterprise level solution competing with the likes of Microsoft then it's actually a screaming deal.

Now, for the corporate training community, the question remains...


wait for it...


...will it integrate with our LMS?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the heads-up. This is the first I have seen of this product. I have a similar product that has many of the same features but also incorporates SCORM and AICC courseware into the mix. You can see a little bit at www.nextwaveknowledge.com.

Are there any other 'socialprise' applications like this that are approaching things from the training/elearning side? I have not seen many myself.

also, thanks for the blog, long time reader, first time commenter.

Anonymous said...

Brian,

Yes you should check out Mzinga.com.

They have developed a social learning suit. LMS + Social / Informal Learning.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Matt. I saw that one but they seem to have purchased different companies and don't really have an integrated solution. They seem to have 3 or 4 different products that together provide that functionality.

Hopefully I will still have some level of success even with some big players in the market already. I think this stuff will be huge in the next 5 years.

bschlenker said...

The convergence of LMS and Social Networking is definitely going to be a hot topic for a few years. I was really happy when I heard about the Knowledge Planet MZinga merge.
I have not looked at NextWaveKnowledge and I have not used Mzinga either, so I can't comment on pros and cons.
The main concern is how do we decide what is worth measuring when it comes to the new social tools. Its a completely different model then traditional ISD practices.
I'm looking forward to the energetic debate in this space that is sure to ensure at events like The eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering next week, or DevLearn in April.
Cheers!
Brent