And you thought social networking was all about text-messaging among bored teenagers.
IBM has another take on it.
The company was set to announce yesterday a set of social software tools that will bring the kind of blogging, idea sharing and war-story swapping typically associated with MySpace and Facebook -- the social networking sites popular among teenagers and college students -- to the corporate world.
Called Lotus Connections, the new software will let employees set up virtual worlds in which they can meet like-minded colleagues within the company and exchange ideas with them, all in the name of improving productivity. And that's just for starters.
The idea, said IBM vice president for social software Jeff Schick, is to "unlock the latent expertise in an organization."
IBM was planning to show the software yesterday in Orlando, Florida, at an annual conference for developers who work with the company's Lotus group, which produces Lotus Notes. An early leader in collaboration software, or "groupware," Lotus Notes has been under attack in recent years from Microsoft's Exchange software.
"Microsoft has been a tough challenge for the Lotus Group," said Erica Driver, an analyst with Forrester Research, a market analysis and consulting company. "Focusing on new technologies is a good approach."
Last week, IBM reported that strong software sales had helped lift the company's profits and revenue for the last quarter, slightly surpassing Wall Street's estimates.
The performance provided some encouragement that IBM's push to revamp its software strategy, including projects like Connections, was gaining ground.
Many companies have already discovered the benefits of bringing social networking into their businesses, but so far most of the tools available to them have focused on a specific element of social networking, like blogging.
"I talk to corporate clients every day, and I'm finding the topic of social networking comes up all the time," Driver said. "What IBM has done validates the use of social computing tools for businesses."
Lotus Connections has five components -- activities, communities, dogear (a bookmarking system), profiles and blogs -- aimed at helping specialists within a company connect and build new relationships based on their individual needs.
The profiles component, for example, lets users search for people by name, specialty or keyword. The program then provides contact information and lists blogs, communities, activities and bookmarks associated with the person.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS