For the uninitiated, enterprise social software (ESS) applications provide some of the same features that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offer, but customized to the enterprise with real-time collaboration features. These applications also offer web 2.0 capabilities through blogs and wikis, but with enterprise-class integration, security and management.
The term “enterprise social software” generally describes this class of tools. As of 2006, “Enterprise 2.0” had become a catchier term, sometimes used to describe social and networked changes to enterprises, which often includes social software (but may transcend social software, social collaboration and software).
The Enterprise Social Software generally available as a hosted service, could be on-site appliance or could be customized according to the corporate standards. The main advantages to use enterprise social software is in corporate security reasons.
One of the important things that should be thinking about is integration with the business applications.
The main parts of the Enterprise Social Software are:
- Social Networking;
- Microblogging;
- Wiki Workspaces;
- Blogs;
- Dashboards or personal pages;
- Media centre;
- Spreadsheets;
- Groups.
Enterprise Social Software should be used not only for fun, it can recreate virtually the advantages of physical co-location that have been lost to innovation and business development teams.