Workplace Social Networking

As social networking is catching up being essential part of our day-to-day lives, it’s apparent as how corporate sector is trying to make use of social networking to keep in touch with customers, employees and prospects.

Jive software, though hardly a household name, it is catching up on its social-flavored web collaboration as what Facebook has done to our social networking.

Jive has about 3000 customers, including Nike, HP, Cisco and SAP. Its software is in use by 15 million employees to sync on projects with co-workers, vendors and customers. It offers blogs, user profiles, Twitter like status updates, Wiki-like document sharing and a ‘what matters’ news feed of all the people and projects you are following. People can also share and tag pictures, video and other contents.

So, how Jive is different than Facebook?

Its ability to work like an Enterprise Social Network software is what makes Jive more standout when comes to cluttered social networking area. It does much more than Linkedin (Linkedin’s revenue model is different and it aims at targeting recruitment process and provides leads for hiring process) and provides enterprise look to Facebook/Twitter.

Jive is not without competition, Microsoft and IBM have software collaboration tools which have more or less with same features.

But for now Jive has first mover advantage and is doing well.