Jive adds social network to collaboration software

Computerworld - Jive Software today announced the availability of Version 2.0 of its Clearspace collaboration software, which adds a social networking feature, project management tools and integration with Microsoft's SharePoint Server.

The latest release extends the first version of Clearspace, which was launched in February 2007, for companies looking to join disparate blogs, wikis and forums into a single corporate application supported by IT, said Jive CEO Dave Hersh.

"[Companies were asking] 'Can you make it so easy to use that anyone in the company can extract value and create value, [and] it isn't just something that someone who uses Facebook can use?'" Hersh said.

Since the release of Version 1.0, Jive signed up 800 new customers and its annual sales have increased by 325%, Hersh noted. The new features in Clearspace 2.0 grew out of customer demands over the last year, he added.

This new version includes a new widgetized user interface that will allow employees to create a personalized view of company content, he said. "It almost becomes like iGoogle for your work life. A user who jumps in can easily move around different widgets that reflect what they are trying to get done," Hersh added.

The new version also includes tools to create miniprofiles of employees -- with their name, the projects they are working on and their location. The miniprofile will let large users easily locate experts on subjects among the employees who use Clearspace, Hersh noted. "Being able to get people out of their silos and post a question to experts companywide is a really big deal," he added.

The new project management features in Version 2.0 can improve cross-team collaboration by centralizing conversations, milestones, tasks and output. The SharePoint integration allows users to publish content to and access files from the Microsoft collaboration and document management servers, Jive noted.

Finally, the new version enables users to securely share documents with partners and customers outside the firewall by taking advantage of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, an open XML technology used for real-time communication.

In related news, Jive announced that it has acquired Texas-based Jotlet and plans to integrate Jotlet's Web 2.0 calendaring technology with Clearspace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.