This latest release is like a giant sandpaper exercise for Clearspace. Now that it's been in the wild with hundreds of large enterprise customers and hundreds of thousands of users banging away at it -- not to mention a team of Jivers sitting alongside these people with their clipboards taking notes -- we've learned quite a bit about what works and what doesn't. What did we hear from our customers?

• Fix the RTE (rich text editor)!
  
• Make everything social
• Make it easy to find and follow people
• Better email / mobile integration
• Make it easy to customize
• Make the conversations contextual

The RTE feedback was easily the loudest. Nothing will happen if you can't get people to create content easily. So we built what I consider to be the best web RTE on the planet. It's such an enjoyable experience, and makes a world of difference for our customers trying to boost adoption and participation. You have to try it out.

We also really boosted the social features in a way that works for everyone -- not just the Facebook generation. Now it's easy to find people, connect with them, and set up or join groups on the fly. You can also deliver the collaboration on any web page with just a code snippet -- for instance, an e-commerce page on snowshoes could show all the conversations about that snowshoe, or a supply chain application could show all the conversations about that supplier, or posts made by people who work for that supplier.

You should really check out the new features for yourself or take a test drive. This is hands-down the best all-around social software application on the planet. I couldn't be more proud of what this team has created.

Our software engineers have been diligently working on Jive Clearspace 2.5 (formerly known as 2.1) over the past several weeks, and we've been putting it through its paces inside Jive. Many have blogged and videoed (?) about it:

Sneak @ one super-tiny Clearspace 2.5 feature

Does your wiki have the Q&A blues?

One other thing we've been working on is the brand-new, not-even-announced-yet, Clearstep business community. This community is already rockin' with both Jive and non-Jive customers. They're sharing good and bad practices about implementing social software inside their organizations. They're sharing about how to roll out thriving online communities, too. The best thing about that community is that it's designed to be vendor-agnostic.

For me, though, I'm most excited about something we'll be offering our customers starting in August, as part of pilot engagements. We will go beyond the software, and really tackle the hard part of any social software implementation: user adoption.

You see, Jive created a cross-functional research team back in April 2008. They visited ten of our largest F500 customers to figure out what was working and what wasn't with their internal Clearspace deployments. They spoke to over 100 business professionals at the executive, mid-level management, and end user levels, and brought back what became over 100 pages of raw, qualitative data (I'm on page 56 at the moment).

The resulting report, which we gave to those customers who participated, highlighted some very compelling patterns across every organization. One of them was that much help was needed to figure out good practices for getting more people to "migrate" their work behavior to be more transparent and sharing.

Now, the next "version" of that research team (that would be Derek DeMoro and I) have put together what we hope is an answer to those needs:

This program is still being formulated, but watch for more information about it and about Jive Clearspace 2.5 very soon!

The idea of social data portability - "the option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors" - has been around for some time now. The DataPortability Project is focused on consumer-oriented sites, and not corporate internal use. The Project people even say so.

Perhaps it's time, though, to change that. Let me tell you a story.

I recently got a new job. I decided to "go new" on many things, including a new hairdo (it's swingy!). Then, I thought, "I know! I'll update my profile picture!" That's when I got irritated. See, I belong to... (counting, hang on)... well, damn. I have profiles that include my photo on these social sites:

• Jive Brewspace (internal deployment of Clearspace)

• Jivespace (external deployment of Clearspace Community for developers)

• Clearstep (another external deployment of Jive Clearspace Community for user adoption and other business practices)

• Wordpress

• LinkedIn

• Facebook

• Last.fm

• Picasa

• Twitter

• Friendfeed

• GTalk

Ask me how long it took to update my photo across all these sites. Now, think about how I also had to change my place of work, email address, maybe a mobile phone number, etc. Yeah. Now you understand the need for social data portability. But really, that's just the surface.

So, what's the data portability picture for the enterprise?

Data portability for the enterprise means blurring even more the lines between enterprise and consumer personal data, and more importantly, making folks more aware of who and what people know, both inside and outside the enterprise.

Let me explain.

Think about all the bits and pieces of your worklife, strewn about all those different systems: HR systems, skills databases, LDAP directories, employee whitepages, LinkedIn, etc. Wouldn't it be great if you could manage all that personal data from a single spot? It can live where it lives – I would call it data transparency, though, not data portability. This can already be accomplished by using data mapping tools in market today, but it takes some serious customization muscles to pull off, not to mention many lunches and cocktails to woo the czars in charge of all of those internal systems so they play nice.

At least with the consumer sites, this becomes easier when enterprise social software systems support data portability. For example, we announced today that we're supporting the DataPortability Project, alongside LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, and others. This means that, if you're using Jive Clearspace inside your enterprise, or Jive Clearspace Community in an external customer and/or business partner environment, your people will eventually be able to plop their LinkedIn or Facebook or other consumer profile information into their Clearspace profile, hopefully with ease and aplomb.

And then, think about all the relationships you've created, not only inside your organization, but on all those consumer sites. With everyone supporting the DataPortability Project, I'll be able to display (not port) all the people I'm connected to out of Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, etc., in my intranet and extranet profiles. That way, my colleagues and customers can more easily see who I know, and more importantly, in what context I know them. Context is critical to understanding the nature of a given relationship. Without that understanding, it's kinda useless to know that I know someone.

Let's take this idea a step further: Why on earth would anyone I work with want to see who's music I listen to on last.fm? Because, those folks might actually be valuable contacts within a different context. And, my Jive colleagues might be able to begin a trusted relationship with them based solely on similar music tastes. This is a wonderful way to tap the voices of thousands over time, especially if creating innovative products is your thing.

Imagine what could eventually result from a conversation about how much two people love the Dixie Chicks, for example.

Now, to take this idea another step even further, read Sam's take on data portability.

Our Clearspace 2.0 launch was very exciting. The media, blogosphere, and twittersphere response was overwhelming. Our team has been cranking hard for many months to bring Clearspace 2.0 to market, and it is an honor to have this much interest in our work. A big thanks to everyone at Jive. Below is a sample of the 50+ articles that were written about the new 2.0 and the Jotlet acquisition:

• Jive Clearspace 2.0: a clear improvement, by Dennis Howlett on Enterprise Alley/ZDNet

• Jive Brings Consumer-Style Coolness to the Enterprise, by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWrite Web

• Jive Software Releases Clearspace 2.0, Acquires Jotlet, by Mark Hendrickson on TechCrunch

• Jive Clearspace 2.0 is named "2.0" for a reason, by Rick Turoczy on Silicon Florist

• Jive's Clearspace: Using Web 2.0 tools to avoid e-mail in business, by Martin LaMonica on CNET

• Collaborative software company Jive acquires Jotlet, gets better project management, by Anthony Ha on VentureBeat

• Jive, Maker of Enterprise Wikis and Blogs, Announces Integration with Sharepoint, by Chris Lynch on CIO.com

• Jive adds social network to collaboration software, by Heather Havenstein on Computerworld

• For a larger list of articles that came out, you can find more aggregated on BlogPulse

Buzz factor

The chart below shows the blogging buzz surrounding Jive Software this past Monday & Tuesday, versus the past two months (from Nielsen BuzzMetrics' BlogPulse). Big spike! Look to the right of the chart:

As the Clearspace 2.0 dust settles

We'll be writing a series posts over the next few weeks to walk-through the new features that we're most excited about:

• Personalized homepage - The widgetized home page is geared to drive faster adoption and improve employee focus and attention

• Expanded profile and org charts - Rich user profiles and organizational relationships increase context about people and make it easier to develop connections and find expertise. It provides a Facebook-like user browsing experience, but presented in a business-oriented org chart.

• Project spaces - Projects are designed to drive cross-functional productivity and manage towards an outcome, with tasks, checkpoints, and calendar views.

• Sharepoint integration - Integration helps bring unity across a common corporate intranet and leverages existing systems rather than creating yet another siloed system.

• External document sharing - Secure document sharing outside the firewall enables productivity tools to be extended to external partners and vendors when needed.

• Audit tools - The admin console's audit view provides visibility and control to IT administrators regarding any changes in the admin console.

• Backend upgrades - Upgrades to the core Clearspace underpinnings make it faster and more reliable.

Stay tuned! We're looking forward to hearing what you think about Clearspace 2.0.

I'm pleased to announce that Jive Software has acquired Jotlet. Jotlet has built some amazing calendar technology that we'll be incorporating into Clearspace in a future release. The two super-talented guys behind Jotlet are joining our team in Portland from Texas.

One key way Jotlet has innovated is by building a super-rich API that allows calendars to be easily embedded into any webpage. That's a big improvement over the Google Calendar approach, which requires an iFrame and doesn't offer a customizable UI. Over time we'll be applying similar concepts to all of the collaborative tools in Clearspace so that it's easy to bring the right social and collaborative features to wherever they're needed. Visit the Jotlet website for more details about their technology and to see it in action.

USA Today just posted a piece on how we are perceived against Sharepoint. It's not a long read, but they do a great job of framing the Clearspace approach and the Sharepoint approach. Here's a clip:

  We put out a press release today about some of the great things that happened in 2007 and how we've taken on a leadership position in this rapidly evolving space. While I'm not one who enjoys flat out boasting, it is very important to us that our successes are recognized so we can build the credibility we need to continue our quest to help companies find smarter ways to work. A couple of the bullet points from the release:

• We added nearly 800 customers

• We saw an increase of 325% in annual sales

• We now have over 2,000 customers, including over 15% of the Fortune 500

Also, to help us steer through this growth phase, we're announced the appointment of Tony Zingale to our Board of Directors. Tony is a Valley heavyweight, with over 30 years of tech experience including his role as the CEO of Mercury Interactive and Clarify. Tony has already been a fantastic addition to the team -- he's got a ton of energy and knows the game inside and out. I couldn't be happier to have him on board.

Download our press release

Today we got an email from the Software & Information Industry Association telling us that Clearspace has been selected as a finalist for Best Collaboration Software Solution. Here are the other finalists:

• Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, Adobe Systems, Inc.

• Citrix GoToMeeting, Citrix Online

• Central Desktop

• Clearspace, Jive Software

• SightSpeed 6.0, SightSpeed, Inc.

We use Adobe Acrobat connect for web-meetings and we like it a lot. Haven't tried GoToMeeting, though I know a lot of people have. Central Desktop is a cool company, we've recently had a good chat with them. Not up to speed on SightSpeed so I'll have to check them out. Looks like a good group!