I have written about NewsGator before (see NewsGator Offers Social Sites ™: A Comprehensive Enterprise Social Networking Suite). I have been a fan of NewsGator for some time as they were my first RSS reader in early 2004 (see Finally, I’m Scanning the Web through NewsGator).  I recently spoke with Brian Kellner, VP of Product Management to catch up on their latest moves.

We started with the iPhone offering. NewsGator is offering a native social iPhone client for Social Sites on SharePoint. They have wisely taken a subset of the Social Sites features, picking the ones most likely to be used through a smart phone. The features center around a sophisticated microblogging suite to provide a focused activity stream that goes across applications. The idea is to provide a central place to receive updates of all types, comment, and pass them on.

Brian recently wrote about this concept in a blog post, “The Trojan Horse Battle for Your Event Store.”  He writes that, “in only a few years, a central event store will be a standard part of nearly all enterprises, and that architectural decision currently is being made indirectly at many organizations.” I certainly agree with this and have written related posts on several occasions. He goes on to write that, “microblogging seems to be achieving its greatest value in the context of broader activity streams that serve as a kind of nervous system for the company.”  This broader role for microblogging, as it becomes more widespread within enterprises, represents a great opportunity for both users and vendors. NewsGator has recognized this and is offering an application to provide the unifying activity stream or “event store.”

The latest NewsGator application for the iPhone is a large step in this direction. You can attach updates to an object or a link. You can attach an update to a context such as an event or a project, and you can react to updates from others, maintaining the context. To support these three capabilities, mobile users can use an iPhone to send status updates, videos and photos to Social Sites for distribution. They can comment on and “like” updates they value and see notifications when others comment on or like their updates. Below you can see an example of the iPhone interface.

Participation in community discussions is also enabled and users can target a question to a person or group. They see the updates that are radiating to others, view updates from a specific colleague or community, and look up contact information for colleagues. Below you can see comments on an activity. They can begin threaded discussions to maintain the context.

They are now planning a BlackBerry version to extend their smart phone coverage. The initial iPad client will contain all the iPhone features. NewsGator is also exploring what additional capabilities, such as content creation, should be added to the iPad client.

The enhanced microblogging features are also part of the desktop version of Social Sites 3.1 that is fully integrated with SharePoint. This SharePoint integration provides enhanced security and leverages existing SharePoint features such as the user profile, reducing redundant requirements. Below is an example of a Social Sites workspace within SharePoint. The iPhone version provides the functionality shown in the central column, while the web version offers the broader content in the three columns.

You can also have Social Sites as a desktop client independent of SharePoint and within your desktop as shown below. In addition, you can work with Social Sites through email notifications and replies. You can also get activity digests through email and respond back still within email.

We next turned to the enhanced analytics that Social Sites now offers.  The activity stream sets up a rich opportunity for analytics around the conversations and knowledge work within the enterprise. I think this is one of the major benefits of operating within an Enterprise 2.0 environment. NewsGator has recognized this and has done some nice work with data visualization. For example, you can get a tag cloud (as shown below) of the top 100 themes within the activity stream.

Clicking on any of these terms brings you to the instances of their use. You can also see the top ten experts on each term (as shown below). The person closest to the term in the middle is the most active. Several factors such as content authored, ideas generated, and tag usage weighs into the expertise scoring. You can see specific contributions for each expert in the right column.

This allows you to quickly see who is saying what to whom and stay better attuned to the pulse of the organization.  There are a number of other creative visualizations. For example, you can drill down into the actions of an individual in the chart above.

The enhancements to NewsGator demonstrate some of the exciting business possibilities that are arising as the consumer Web 2.0 tools get greater usage within the enterprise.  I look forward to seeing more.

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