(Updated, with reference to announcement by Awareness of its new product, called Summer 2007)
Dozens of social networking companies are trying to serve businesses. So we were surprised yet another young company, Connectbeam, has just managed to raise $3.5million to try the same.
We talked yesterday with Connectbeam's Puneet Gupta, and asked him why it isn't game over yet.
You've got giants like Cisco acquiring vendors like Five Across (see coverage) and Tribe (see coverage) to offer businesses their own networks. Intel has packaged up a group of vendors, from wiki company Socialtext to blog company Six Apart, to offer companies networking features. The list goes on: There's IntroNetworks, Facebook's corporate groups, VisiblePath, Illumio... [This just in: Awareness, yet another company from Waltham, Mass., says it has just changed its name from iUpload, and is throwing together blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, photos, videos, forums, discussion groups -- all into one offering for businesses. In March, it raised $7 million from Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.]
Gupta countered that we're still at the earliest stages of corporate social networking. So far, most of vendors have offered lightweight Web offerings, and big business customers aren't willing to risk putting their data on these vendors' servers. Honeywell's executives told Gupta they won't even let employees download Google's desktop search for data security reasons.
Connectbeam, based in Redwood City, Calif., and soon moving to Mountain View, Calif., has signed up companies like Honeywell and Proctor & Gamble -- despite having no outside financing.
A social networking product for businesses, Gupta said, needs to combine social bookmarking -- which lets any employee bookmark information important to them -- with social networking features. Many social network vendors offer the latter -- a way to connect -- but not a rigorous bookmarking feature. Company employees don't need to network, they need to know who knows what, says Gupta.
Here's a demo of the Connectbeam product (not the greatest quality, but Gupta says it will be updated soon):
When you count the number of companies who integrate both of these features, the list gets thinner, Gupta said. There's IBM's Lotus Connections, released about a month ago. BEA has a similar product. Like Connectbeam, these work with companies' existing software. Connectbeam, for example is building its product to work within corporate versions of Google, Fast Search & Transfer, and soon Autonomous and Endeca -- so that the networking can take place directly within an existing search environment.
The funding comes from Gabriel Ventures and Startup Capital Ventures.