A possible answer to these challenges are Enterprise Microblogging solutions, such as Communote, for open communication about topics and projects. However, verifiably benefits and the Return on Investment (RoI) of the so-called Social Software such as Enterprise Microblogging is still missing. In cooperation with the TU Chemnitz and the Communardo Software GmbH a convergence to the solution is made within a thesis by Alrik Degenkolb.

In this blog post about the current state and approaches of the thesis, a model has already been presented, which can assist in the calculation of the RoI and showing the success factors of Enterprise Microblogging.

Help us with the identification of particularly valuable applications of Enterprise Microblogging and make a contribution to a first approximation of the Return on Investment. By participating in the survey, you help to make the value of Enterprise Microblogging visible.

[https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQNSYC7]

The answers are carefully evaluated and after the completion of the survey the results of the thesis and of the survey will be published on the Communote blog.

We look forward to your active participation and feedback to the survey.

Communote Enterprise Microblogging will present new Features, a new Frontend and interesting integration possibilities.

You’ll find us at the pavilion for Mobility&Collaboration Hall B0, Booth 305/E.

Looking forward to your visit.
Please make an appointment at jens.osthues@communardo.de.

Auto-Save Functionality

There is no character limitation in Communote and so even longer information snippets can be managed there. For example many users write short meeting protocols right into their project microblog. Especially for such use cases the new auto-save functionality was designed. It makes sure that problems with your internet connection or a problem with the browser does not lead to a loss of important information: the text is saved in the background and is restored automatically.

IP Range Filter

Using this new functionality you can restrict access to your Communote to certain IP ranges. With the IP range filter you can control your company’s information flow even better.

Confluence Integration

While Communote hosts the dynamic flow of information, wikis are very good in the joint creation and editing of documents. Our new Confluence plugin connects both worlds: you can show and create Communote postings right into Confluence wiki pages. An example use case is a project wiki with wiki sites for every sub-project (for static information like team members and tasks) including current micro-postings from Communote.

Other new functionality

• automatic database updates
• extended API
• blocking of accounts after the wrong password
• Favicon
• Various bug fixes

The new features have been made available with the new Version 1.0.1.

Microblogging is a great tool for knowledge-intensive work environments. This is the case for academic research and education. One of our customers, the chair for Management Information Systems of Chemnitz University, was featured with a posting about educational microblogging on the well-known Touchbase-Blog last week.

The research group will attend the Educamp in Ilmenau (Germany) at the weekend and discuss innovative concepts for education. This is a great chance to discuss microblogging with them and get the latest news on their microblogging experiences.

Communote will also be part of a presentation of Dirk Röhrborn on “Microsharing im Unternehmen: Wie Dokumentieren und Lernen Teil der täglichen Arbeit wird” at the “Learning & Knowledge Solutions” forum on wednesday, March 4th at 1 pm in hall 6 / B 34.

If you would like to meet us at Cebit please get in touch with us via e-mail or twitter.

Do you need a free ticket? Please let us know. We have a limited number of tickets available for you. We look forward to meeting you in Hannover.

The enterprise account allows companies to set up their own microblogging universe: invite and activate your collegues to your Communote. Create and share an unlimited number of microblogs: e.g. for each topic/project/unit one microblog with its own rights management settings.

The enterprise version comes with LDAP support, user management and all the useful functions from the personal version: tagging, filtering and secure RSS.

You will need an activation code to access the beta. You can grab one at mbc09 and start trying enterprise microblogging with Communote immediately after verification. We will need to use these codes to control the server load in the early phases of operations.

If your are going to Hamburg for MBC09 watch out for Martin & Dirk from the team and for the Communote minicards. If you cannot be there just ask us for your personal activation code or register at www.communote.com.

Please give feedback or ask for help: you can reach us via Twitter (@communote) and Email (martin@communote.com).

Furthermore, we are about to finish a major development step for Communote. Very soon, you will be able to register for an enterprise account of communote that provides your company or team with your very own, totally separated installation of Communote. Also, development of the Communote mobile client and XMPP interface implementation is making good progress. Please stay tuned for more news about this topic.

As the technical development goes on we are going to increase our community activities. For this reason there will be more blog postings and twitter updates. You can reach me as your community manager also via email to martin(at)communote.com.

There was a valuable feedback last week via Twitter that our beta testers feel lonely. The background for this is the deactivation of public (visible/writable to all) postings by default for security reasons. Now we have at least one public microblog with introductions and hints in the beta testing zone. Beside of that we are working on a demo version with real-life use cases inside.

Finally we are working on website improvements. Very soon, registering with Communote will become easier and there will be a convenient way to send feedback to the team.

This is how Communote looks like:

Now it is your turn. Public registration will be opened at www.communote.com this Friday, 5th December 2008.

We would like to invite you to learn more about Communote in one of our live-webinars at www.communote.com on Friday:

• In German: 05 Dec 2008, 03:00 pm CET (local time in Germany)
• In English: 05 Dec 2008, 12:00 am EST (New York), 09:00 am PST (California), 05:00 pm GMT (London)

In this webinar we would like to present the Communote services to you. Further, you will have the chance to get all your questions answered via live-chat or twitter (@communote).

To participate in the webinar please go to www.communote.com at the time mentioned and follow the instructions from there.

We are looking forward to welcome you on Friday. Please feel free to contact us via e-mail or twitter (@communote) if any questions should arise.

During the last months we at Communardo have experimented a lot with social software – and in fact also through the last 7 years before. Wikis, blogs & co. have played a mayor role in our customer engagements (e.g. for Intranet 2.0) but also in our internal IT-landscape. Especially, in our own practice we sense a rising demand to professionalize the use of micro-content like short messages, notes, hints & tipps, hyperlinks. E-mail, instant messaging and personal folders are just not the right place to store these bits of information with stedily growing importance.

The idea, just to use twitter or some kind of logged instant messaging is equally charming but not suitable. Whereas the strength of twitter.com lies in the building and up-keeping of social and professional networks an in PR and marketing it is – at least in our opinion – not really usable for enterprise use. Instead of following a people-centric approach (“follow”) we are focusing on topic-centric communication. We think that this suites better the needs in our business world. We need at least some amount of order and structure just as we need discretion and access control and persistent storage of content. This is what we miss at twitter.com and its accompanying services.

This is the reason why a team of software engineers at Communardo has started a project to develop an own microblogging platform. We have been inspired by first tests of project blogs based on wordpress with the Prologue Theme and by the possibilities of Ajax & Co. in the frontend as well as Java in the backend to build a company-wide communications platform that allows for topic-centric microblogging.

We are excited about the results of our work an the large number of possible applications that are currently beeing discussed in the enterprise 2.0 community, e.g  here and here and here. As a consequence we decided to build an online-service based on our software – communote.com.

At present we are working intensively to build a scalable multi-client internet platform. In a couple of weeks we will make communote available to those who would like to beta-test it. In the meantime, there is the possibility to register for beta-testing at communote.com.

Please follow our weblog in English (this is where you are) as well as in German at humannetworkcompetence.de und via www.twitter.com/communote where we will regularly write posts on new features, use cases and new ideas.

Communote combines many brilliant ideas from blogging, tagging and filtering. This is a first glimpse at the user interface:

Many excellent people are engaged in building communote.com. At this place a big THANK YOU to Torsten, Martin, Stefan, Ronny, Markus, Katja, Tobias, Falk, Martin, Jens, René, Niels, Daniela, Sebastian, Ilja and all those that have been working in the background to make communote happen!