Socialcast (news, site) is yet another player in the enterprise microblogging pool, but with a different twist. Rather than creating a new space for collaboration, Socialcast Reach brings the conversation into already existing applications, such as SharePoint and CRM systems.
Bringing the Conversation Home
Today the product (aimed mostly at larger businesses) is mainly composed of three applications:
Reach Stream
Stream takes the conversations you have with colleagues and plants it directly into familiar business environments, such SharePoint, or any Intranet or business system environment that supports html/javascript.
Reach Discussion
Reach Discussion focuses conversation around key resources, people, projects, etc. within an environment such as Salesforce. These discussions then live in both Socialcast and the business system in question:
Reach Recommend
Reach is just as much about starting conversations as it is about encouraging employees to participate in them. Accordingly, the Recommend extension allows employees to highlight critical content across the enterprise--much like highlighting interesting content across the Web for your Facebook friends by clicking the "like" button. Once a user clicks on the “recommend” button on any resource, a rich message is inserted into the Socialcast platform, surfacing that recommendation into a stream of aggregated content.
The Holy Trinity(?)
Together, these applications work to keep discussion closest to where the action's at, rather than require employees to learn a new system.
“Reach attains that ‘holy grail’ of in-context collaboration within enterprises that have so much information, they can’t surface it for the greater good when employees really need it,” explained Tim Young, CEO and Founder, Socialcast. “Reach solves the ‘not another application’ problem within corporate work structures by providing a new paradigm where employees can collaborate in context within their existing workflows and applications.”
As Enterprise Collaboration continues to reshape and shift around the changing times, Socialcast Reach may be a look into the next phase of products based on enterprise microblogging. But then again, we can't help but wonder if part of the appeal of solutions such as Yammer and Chatter is being able to turn it off.
What say you? Let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, check out Reach in further detail.
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