I’ve spoken with a number of people in recent months about what we might call the “e-mail problem”. E-mail has never been reliable, but the clear requirement for spam filtering has made is less so. There’s no such thing as a perfect spam filter, and I’m sure all of us are living with missed e-mail messages as a result. IM is one alternative, I know, but maybe something more all-encompassing is required.
I do not in general follow the social-networking space, as I view it as simply another Web application that will run just fine on modern wireless networks of all forms. With a few exceptions, I think most social networks are really just another form of entertainment and not really suitable to business and enterprise applications. Well, that may be about to change.
Visto, a company best known for competing (and successfully) in the BlackBerry-dominated mobile push-email space, today announced a social network capability in Visto Mobile 6 that may very well point to the future of enterprise communications. When you think about it, social networking is just another form of groupware, a concept that goes way, way back and that I originally thought, in the early 1990s, would be one of the key drivers of wireless. Instead the drivers have been e-mail and the Web, just as on wired networks, but, again, that may be about to change.
Social networks implement what might be formally called closed user groups – you need to join to share in the fun (or work, as we’ll shortly see). The social network model is already quite well-suited to the mobile lifestyle, and, if we simply change the content from whom Sally Jo is dating (along with photos of the lucky dude) to next month’s strategic planning session (along with photos of the new product), well, I’m sure you can see how this might work really, really well.
Visto sells to the carriers. The key to this transformation, then, is to get the carriers to (a) buy this product, and (b) offer a business/enterprise version. (a) will take time, and (b) just isn’t where the carriers focus, so enterprise social networks won’t be available overnight. It’s my hope that a service bureau of some form will pick this up and offer an enterprise-centric service directly to end-users, or that Visto will sell a version of their app directly to enterprises. Visto includes end-to-end encryption as well as integration of address-book, synchronization, and other functionality that businesses require, and mentioned to me that they expect the “prosumer” user to push for adoption in the enterprise – just as was the case with the Mac. Regardless, they have the pieces, and I think that demand will be there over the next few years.
So – a lot needs to happen before the enterprise adopts social networks, or whatever we’ll call them in a business context, as the new enterprise IT model for internal communications. But, with this announcement, the technology is there to extend these systems to mobile workers, who, being frequently or constantly away from their desks (if they even have a desk anymore) and otherwise out of the office loop will probably benefit most from the availability of this capability.
