It is really exciting to be part of the team announcing
Socialtext Signals this morning.
When we launched Socialtext Dashboard back in the fall, it was a cool product, but taking a lot of that content and adding it to an AIR client has transformed the way that I use our platform. Dashboard is really cool and there was a lot of helpful information in there. If you don't use Socialtext, Dashboard is a customized home page that you create based on on content that is important to you and your company. A customized intranet home page, if you will, with just the information that is important to me. The most important element of Dashboard has been being able to keep track of the changes to content that I'm explicitly interested in and being able to Signal, Socialtext's microblogging platform.
Like
Twitter, Signals is only so useful as a browser based service. To see your updates, you have to keep toggling back to the window where you have it open. This is a bit disruptive. So it was 10 pounds of awesomeness in a 5 pound bag when our engineers developed an AIR client for Signals.
Like Twhirl, Signals AIR is a persistent desktop client that not only provides updates from your colleagues, but it also has extremely tight integration with the entire platform. So
a.) I'm alerted when people I work with share thoughts, ideas, questions, etc (like Twitter)
b.) I'm able to see updates to content that I have an explicit (someone commented on your page) or implicit (someone you follow made this change) interest in following
c.) If someone I don't know says something interesting, I'm able to drill down into that persons profile to see their contact info, what they've been working on, and learn more about their areas of expertise.
Over the past month or so of using the client, I've found that it makes me significantly more productive and, even more important, I feel like I'm more in touch with people who aren't in the office. It truly delivers on the promise of having team members share ideas and get questions resolved more effectively.
Of course, I'm biased, but take a look at what others are saying:
TechCrunch - The activity stream which Socialtext makes visible is very particular to its products, and in fact is designed to keep employees engaged with those products. Any time someone changes a page that you’ve created or edited in the past, it shows up as an activity. So constant updates from Ralph in engineering about the progress of a project serves as a reminder for everyone else to do their part as well.
Mashable - Rather than market Signals as a standalone enterprise microblogging tool – of which there are already many – it’s integrated into Socailtext’s broader social networking and wiki platform, which already includes features like activity streams so you know when colleagues edit wikis, make a blog post, or upload a document, for example.
PC World - those involved in tasks like product development who manage sensitive and confidential information, are better served by Signals, which lets them microblog in a secure, controlled environment, he said. "With Signals, you can 'tweet' without giving out a secret to the Twitter public," Aparicio said.
