Enterprise social network Tibbr has had a strong emphasis on mobile access for some time but today it has taken another step forward with newly designed apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry 10.

Tibbr is the enterprise social networking solution made by Tibco, the 15-year-old $3.5 billion enterprise software company. It competes against solutions Microsoft’s Yammer, Jive Software, Salesforce’s Chatter, and Moxie. Tibbr now serves more than 1.5 million paid users across 157 companies.

It makes sense to see Tibco push Tibbr’s mobile capabilities to a new level, especially in light of competitors like Chatter upping its mobile game recently.

Ram Menon, president of Tibco’s social computing division, told VentureBeat the new apps are about making sure workers have access to the service and collaboration tools no matter where they are. Even in the office or at home with computers nearby, many workers want the flexibility to respond and check feeds on their smartphones and tablets.

“Mobile has always been our strong point,” Menon said. “We want to make it easy to see what’s happening in your network. Irrespective of device we’ve got you covered.”

The new apps are all unified with a similar design and feature sets. Each app takes advantage of Tibbr’s “Enterprise Social Graph” to make sure employees see people’s updates and important documents. Through integrated apps, you can even edit and open documents from other services from within Tibbr. For example, if someone in your feed has posted a document from Box, you can tap on it and it will open the file in the Box app. Menon said the apps only do this with apps like Box, Salesforce, Oracle, and SharePoint, but Tibco plans to add more.

Two other handy features in Tibbr’s mobile apps are called “Links” and “Files.” In the top photo, which shows the iPad version of the Tibbr, you can see these sections of the screen near the top. Menon said “Links” and “Files” give a strong visual representation of what the content has been shared on your network.

Take a look at what the iPhone version looks like the photos below.

Photo via Tibbr

This is a guest post by Matt Tucker, co-founder and CTO of Jive Software.

Last week, Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell wrote a provocative guest post positing that standalone social business software will die this year. I wanted to set the record straight on the parts he got right, but also what he got totally wrong.

The thrust of his argument is that businesses need more than just a Facebook-like activity stream for conversations where employees can talk about work. I totally agree, and also … duh.

But as we enter 2013, the move past this first wave of social business is already well under way. I think Mitchell gets a lot right about what comes next. The second wave of social business is all about delivering measurable business value. It moves beyond conversation and into action. It lets employees get work done instead of just talk about work. And instead of being driven solely by IT, it’s focused on deeper use cases aligned around specific lines of business.

This is a profound transformation. For the first time, companies doing social business the right way are measuring a massive business impact.

McKinsey & Co. last year issued the most comprehensive report on social business and the social economy previously available and found that social technology can provide a 20 to 25 percent improvement in productivity in the enterprise — that adds up to between a $900 billion and $1.3 trillion annual value.

On the heels of that report, we worked with the top global business consulting firm to investigate this further and to understand just how customers are getting value from social platforms, measured by hard ROI metrics.

Even we at Jive were surprised by the results. We found that companies using the Jive platform showed an increase of 15 percent in worker productivity and a 2 to 4 percent increase in topline revenue due to major reductions in time looking for information, fewer meetings, and less email. That’s business value, and those are the type of metrics that every company should demand out of its social business platform.

Standalone social business platforms, when done right, create a powerful social layer that provides the contextual webbing between all enterprise systems, connecting people with expertise and people with information — no matter what app they’re currently using. By giving workers what they need when they need it, they can make decisions faster and be more productive.

Social for social’s sake is dead. Facebook for the enterprise is dead — and frankly, it was never the answer. Pictures of your kids’ soccer team or where the team should go for lunch does not deliver business value. This is what I call the first wave of social business, and it’s long over.

But to equate that with the future of standalone social business software is flat-out wrong.

Those companies that deliver rich, collaborative, and innovative platforms for people to get real work done are winning. These platforms go way beyond the stream so that people can do more of what they love (and get paid to do) –- code, develop, sell, market, innovate, etc.

I believe these platforms won’t come from the IT-centric mega-vendors who are simply bolting on social to their current offerings to sell more business process stuff –- just look at their track records.

So for the record, 2013 is not the year that standalone social business platforms go away, but instead it’s the year that social business goes mainstream. It’s about time.

Matt Tucker is the co-founder and CTO of Jive Software. He is responsible for the long-term technical and strategic direction of Jive’s products. Along with Bill Lynch, Matt founded Jive in 2001 and has helped build the company from just two people to where it is today. You can find Matt on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Social business image via samarttiw/Shutterstock

Tibbr, the enterprise social network from Tibco, has added new features including a social graph, API for developers, and new integrations with Box, Badgeville, Teamly, and more.

Tibbr provides an internal social network for companies and competes with big names like Microsoft’s Yammer, Salesforce’s Chatter, and Jive Software. But even with the heavy competition, it has still had fairly decent traction and has attracted such customers as Macy’s, Nielsen, KPMG, Shell, and OOCL. Now the company hopes to attract even more enterprises with the new features inside Tibbr 4.

“I think people are asking for more than what’s already out there,” Tibco president of social computing Ram Menon told VentureBeat. “They want context and intelligence surrounding their notifications.”

New Tibbr 4 features include:

• Insights — As you can see in the top photo, Insights is a handy feature that lets people discover relevant and important things happening in their networks. It highlights how many likes your content has, requests you’ve received and need to respond to, which users have updated their profiles, where users are checking in, and more.

• Social Profile — The new Tibbr social profile allows your info to be connected to the network’s social graph. Ideally, these profiles make HR’s life easier with better data about employees, and the feature includes ways to interact with public social networks too. It also lets employees find other people inside their companies who have expertise they need.

• Enterprise Social Graph API — This API tool lets developers tap into all the data being posted by employees. If used right, app devs could use this data when they build new applications for the workplace that mesh with Tibbr’s interface.

• Partner ecosystem and app store — Finally, Tibbr 4 includes what amounts to an app marketplace. Companies will be able to choose and distribute apps to their employees using Tibbr, and outside companies like Box, Badgeville, Teamly, and Fileboard will be able to write to the Tibbr API. For example, Box is integrated so you can access Box functions from Tibbr without opening a new tab in your browser.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tibco provides on-premise and cloud infrastructure software to more than 4,000 customers. Tibbr has 1 million paid users across more than 100 companies.

Check out a few more screens of Tibbr’s new design below.

Professional social network LinkedIn has added real-time notifications to let you know when people comment on or like a post, send an invitation to connect, and more, the company announced today.

Highly reminiscent of Facebook, these notifications give you a better sense of what’s happening with people you’re connected to on LinkedIn and, maybe more importantly, encourage you to spend more time on the site so you can see real-time responses.

The company writes:

Launching today is our new notifications feature, which will keep you notified in real-time when someone likes what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, views your profile, accepts your invitation, and much more.

Here’s what you’ll see: a notification flag at the top of your homepage and a new Inbox envelope icon. A red circle appears when you have something new, such as comments or likes on your shares, an accepted connection request, new inMails and more. This new feature is all part of our ongoing effort to make it easier to keep engaging discussions going with your network.

Notifications are just beginning to roll out today, but all LinkedIn users will have the new feature within the next few weeks.

Next up, the company plans to add similar notifications to its mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. The company says mobile notifications are “coming soon.”

Notifications screenshot: LinkedIn

Google has added new business-focused features to its Google+ social network including restricted posts, video Hangout integration with Google Calendar, and better administrative controls.

Google+ has mostly had a consumer-facing focus since its launch more than a year ago. But now it’s beginning to show that it’s committed to businesses using the service now as part of the Google Apps suite. Google seems to think if a business is already using Google Docs and Gmail, then that business might as well start using Google+ for video chat and social networking.

“Today we’re launching an initial set of Google+ features designed specifically for businesses, and we’re excited to move into a full preview mode for Apps customers,” a Google spokesperson said. “During this preview period, organizations that have gone Google will be able to use the business features of Google+ for free through the end of 2013 while we continue to add more features and administrative controls designed for organizations.”

The first major feature is restricted posts, which are private to your organization and can’t be shared outside of your business network. You also add sharing your post with people outside the organization as well.

Next is Google+ Hangouts integration with Google Calendar. Hangouts was already integrated with Gmail and Docs, so it was easier to launch Hangouts from those apps. Now Google Apps users will be able to add Hangouts to events in their calendars, making it possible for attendees to join a Hangout from the invite or Cal entry.

Finally, Google is adding better administrative controls to Google+. Admins will be able set defaults and restrictions on what employees can do with Google+ posts. They can also set up restrictions on Google+ Hangouts to make video meetings private.

Google also has more business-focused features planned for the future, including “a mobile version of Google+ for enterprise users and more administrative controls.”

Photo illustration: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Original briefcase photo: Kitch Bain/Shutterstock

When Microsoft bought Yammer for $1.2 billion, concerns arose that the enterprise social network might lose some of its innovative spirit. But today Yammer has pushed back on that idea with the announcement of several big updates, including a new “inbox” that prioritizes conversations, a real-time messaging interface, and integrations with Hootsuite and seven other services.

“People were wondering if we would keep up our pace of innovation after the Microsoft acquisition,” Yammer cofounder and CTO Adam Pisoni told VentureBeat. “The answer is yes.”

The first parts of today’s announcement are updates to the main Yammer interface. The biggest interface change is the new Inbox. The Inbox replaces Private Messages on the right side but offers more functionality. In the Inbox, you can prioritize your messages, follow and unfollow conversations, send and reply to private messages, and search across your Inbox.

“The Inbox makes it possible to track conversations you need and should take action on,” Pisoni said. “You can now see what’s most important.”

Next is the new “Online Now” section in the bottom right corner that shows you coworkers that are also online and allows for real-time chat. It looks and functions similarly to instant messaging interfaces in Gmail or Facebook. You can also send messages to folks even if that user is offline. One problem with this feature is that you can’t go “invisible,” so the only way to keep coworkers from pinging you all day is to close your Yammer tab or app.

Yammer has implemented several minor interface updates here, too. On the homepage, elements from the left panel pushed to the top right corner to give more room to different groups in the right side. The homepage also feature trending files that have been recently updated, and companies can now pin important announcements to the top of employee feeds until they are read.

The other part of Yammer’s announcement today is a set of new app intergrations. The biggest of these is social media management app Hootsuite. Now in Hootsuite, you’ll be able to add and monitor Yammer feeds from the dashboard. Other integrations include Get Satisfaction, FuzeBox, Bevalley, If This Then That (IFTTT), Mindflash, Mindjet, and Zapier. These integrations make it possible to cross-post info from these apps on your Yammer feed or login with Yammer Connect to personalize a service.

Pisoni estimates that Yammer will have these updates rolled out to all customers in the next two weeks. He also said the Yammer iOS app will add updates including “Inbox” in the next few weeks. He didn’t give a timeline for an Android app revamp with the Inbox, but we’d expect it to be updated a few weeks after iOS.

You can a look at the new “Online Now” real-time chat function below:

And here’s the new Inbox:

Homepage photo credit: KnowYourMeme

Enterprise social networking company Jive Software has considerably upgraded its product offerings for the first time since the company went public last December, with the debut of new apps to help its customers stay in touch and collaborate better.

Palo Alto-based Jive faces strong competition from Yammer, Moxie, and Salesforce’s Chatter, but it’s also in a class of its own as a newly public company. Jive earned $22.5 million in revenue back in February per its fourth fiscal quarter. To keep increasing revenue, it needs to attract more customers and up the ante on its offerings. Which brings us to today’s announcement.

The new apps and features Jive has built for its customers greatly expand its capabilities in social, search, and collaboration. One of the most interesting new additions is Jive Anywhere, which lets you comment on and share any content from around the web with your co-workers. For example, you can go to a Wikipedia article, make a note about it, and then share that article (with comments included) with your team.

“We’ve talked about this for years, but now we’re finally doing it,” Nathan Rawlins, Jive’s VP of product marketing, told VentureBeat. “We thought that social should follow you and it should be a pervasive experience no matter where you go.”

Here’s how the company describes the new features:

• Jive Anywhere – a breakthrough capability that extends social business to the web at large, enabling users to access
social functions from any website or web application.
• Jive !App Experiences – enabling users to invoke powerful applications and merge them seamlessly into social
business workflow with a single keystroke.
• Jive Edge – a sophisticated social intelligence engine that optimizes a wide range of social business processes such
as search, providing more relevant, precise, and personalized results.
• Major improvements in Jive What Matters activity streams, including customizable Attention Streams focused on
specific processes and people.
• Jive for Teams – a new group collaboration solution for teams of 25 to 250,000 people.
• A dramatically simplified and engaging user experience.

Companies that want to give Jive a spin can also now do so with Try Jive, a 30-day free trial meant for small and large teams that is entirely browser-based.

You can view more photos showing Jive’s new feature lineup below:

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Enterprise social networking player Moxie Software has updated its signature Spaces software suite so it integrates customer responses with employee collaboration into a single offering, the company announced Wednesday morning.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Moxie faces strong competition from Jive Software, Yammer, and Salesforce’s Chatter. Even with so many companies fighting for the business social network spotlight, it still had a major year in 2011, with the addition of 75 new customers and a boost in recurring revenues by 40 percent.

As it grows and fights the competition, Moxie has to keep its software up-to-date and ahead of the curve. The latest version of Spaces tries to accomplish this by providing more ways to interact with customers through your in-house business social network.

“The biggest challenge CEOs face today is getting their enterprises closer to their customers,” Moxie CEO Tom Kelly said in a statement. “To provide real benefits, enterprise social technology must deliver real customer value. Our suite makes it easier for organizations to find and deliver the right answer to customers through their channel of choice.”

The two big feature additions to the new version Spaces are Expert Connect and Spaces Connect. Expert Connect enables “cross-departmental collaboration for Customer Service and Support, IT, HR and Sales and Marketing to ensure accurate and efficient customer communications across channels.” Spaces Connect, on the other hand, allows for a “comprehensive integration framework with secure APIs and pre-built connectors” and integration with Moxie apps like CRM, ERP, Content Management, HR, and more.

The new version of Spaces will be available to all Moxie customers by the end of March.

Moxie has also provided an infographic showing the state of business collaboration tools and the intersection with customers, which you can check out below:

Business network photo: violetkaipa/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Cisco announced today that it is launching a small number of collaboration services from its enterprise social network, Quad, as a separate, lite service called Jabber.

Jabber pulls a few of the more popular features from Cisco’s teleconferencing service and Quad and slaps it on just about every device. That includes secure instant-messaging, visual voicemail, desktop sharing and eventually video conferencing. The service will come out for Mac personal computers first. Users can also use Jabber to transfer phone calls from one device to the next — such as from a mobile phone to a home phone.

Cisco is also launching the service on the iPad and its own tablet, the Cius. The service is also coming to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and devices running Google’s Android. Cisco is also launching it for Nokia’s now-dead Symbian mobile operating system because the devices are so widely distributed.

Just about every enterprise company has taken a crack at mimicking real-life collaboration through an online service. Yammer, Salesforce and Cisco — for example — all have enterprise social networks. But as popular as each application has become — Salesforce’s Chatter has around 80,000 users, and Yammer has more than 100,000 — the field is still pretty segmented. Various services like file sharing and customer support are strewn across multiple startups.

Cisco tried to buck that trend by duct taping every service together in its own enterprise social network, Quad. But that network is geared mostly toward Cisco customers that already use the company’s teleconferencing and networking services. Salesforce also followed a similar trend for its social network, Chatter, but it was forced to unleash it with a freemium model in order to compete with other enterprise collaboration services.

Despite any success that Quad had, however, there was still a lot of demand from Cisco users for specific features — not the full service, said Laurent Philonenko, Cisco’s vice president of unified communications.

“We’ve seen a lot of demand for embedding just some of those Quad features in tablets and on desktops,” Philonenko said.

The teleconferencing and instant-messaging features will appear on mobile devices in the second half of the year and are already available on PCs.