Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space.  I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV.  Obviously I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can.  If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week.  This is just getting started and I expect it to grow quite a bit but I’ll try to keep it manageable.  Here is the roundup for this week.

Jive Software New Mobile Apps

Although Jive has offered it’s product on mobile devices in the past they are now creating native applications specifically for iPhone and Android devices.  Additionally Jive is also creating new applications to better help serve corporate sales teams.  Per the announcement these mobile apps are going to greatly improve the functionality of Jive on mobile but moving from beyond just observing and commenting on content to actually creating content such as a document.  The smartphone apps are free but the new sales application will be $24/user/month and is designed to provide much richer customer data, a more robust mobile CRM if you will.

Link to announcement

My POV:

Glad to see Jive staying so committed to mobile.  Many of the companies I speak and work with are very much focused on empowering their mobile workforce and extending capabilities to these devices is a big part of that.  I haven’t seen the new mobile sale application yet so I can’t comment too much on that, I’m sure the price will be very negotiable.

Yammer Partners with Klout 

Yammer announced that they will be integrating Klout scores into employee profiles.  Not only can an individuals Klout score be displayed internally but organizations have the ability to create a company specific Klout score which reflects how influential an employee is just internally within the organization.  Yammer will also be adding a developer certification program and is actively working on building out their ecosystem.

Link to announcement

My POV:

More of a nice to have instead of a need to have.  This isn’t that big of a deal in my opinion.  It seems like Klout is having some challenges on the consumer side of things so is now trying their luck inside of organizations.  Other vendors have had their own internal scoring and reputation system for a while now.  I like the idea of being able to create and customize your internal Klout score for employees but I don’t see this as a critical or even a necessary feature for most organizations, still…a nice to have should you want it.

Tomfoolery Launches Their Anchor App

Started by former Flickr GM Kakul Srivastava, Tomfoolery is a company created to build mobile apps for work.  Their first app was just released called “Anchor.”  The app as of now is free to download and is similar to what you would expect to see and find from any other enterprise collaboration application.  However, the user experience and design is much improved.

Link to announcement

My POV:

I think that Tomfoolery is going to be an interesting company to pay attention to over the next 1-2 years.  I played around with their Anchor app and while I really like the design and layout it’s not that different then what other platforms are already offering. Perhaps this is better suited for mid-size and smaller organizations but I have a hard time seeing Anchor make its way into larger organizations at this point in time, perhaps in the future.

 

 

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