5 Web Applications to Watch in the Enterprise - Socialcast

Socialcast
In June, Socialcast got a fresh upgrade to its corporate social networking software that could make it more compelling for enterprises that want to link to outside, third-party services like Twitter and YouTube.

Built on a SaaS platform, Socialcast 2.0 enables users to pull content from the other sites they visit and link them together into one collaborative space. The app allows for imports from Del.icio.us, Digg, Google Reader, LinkedIn, and others.

The goal, according to the company, is to reduce unproductive communications, by letting each employee decided how they want to find and use information.

In other words, if a company's employees are already using a large number of social networking tools, they may be clogging up the email system in sending links, and squandering work time. Instead, they can share info company-wide, in a way that's similar to Twitter, but without the consumer focus of that tool.

Bill Ives, at the blog AppGap -- which focuses on software tools that foster organization and collaboration -- notes that Twitter isn't an "enterprise 2.0" app, since it doesn't have features that appeal to CIOs. He notes, "Socialcast has taken on this challenge and now provides the micro-blogging capabilities found within Twitter in a form that is optimized for enterprise use."