Socialtext rising
Kudos to the gang at Socialtext, where I am on the advisory board, who found their way into the New York Times New Economy column. Nice job on the piece, Amy Cortese. An excerpt:
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at May 19, 2003 08:42 AM | TrackBack
...various entrepreneurs are beginning to tailor wiki software to corporate use. SocialText, a San Francisco start-up, for example, has wiki software with Web log and chat capabilities. It has also added security features and programmed the whole package to work with standard office and e-mail software.
The SocialText software, which starts at a price of $995 a year for five users, is being used in about 20 companies, typically small businesses or departments within larger ones, according to Ross Mayfield, SocialText's chief executive.
One SocialText customer is Composite Tech, a $10-million-a-year maker of bicycle tires sold under the Zipp brand. Since early April, Composite Tech, based in Indianapolis, has been using the SocialText wiki for a variety of tasks. Employees contribute informal notes on what the competition is doing, for example, while product development engineers keep track of production schedules as well as advances in materials and other innovations that they might use in future models. Notes from meetings are kept in a wiki, and sales and customer service employees can consult the pages to check on production status and plans.
Denham Grey, the production manager at Composite Tech, says the wiki has become a central repository for information that formerly was shared only in an ad hoc way through e-mail or face-to-face encounters. The wiki, he says, is making it possible to build an "informal corporate memory."
Another SocialText user is Global Business Network, a consulting company in Emoryville, Calif., that employs the software to create comprehensive records of client meetings. Chris Coldewey, a consulting associate at Global Business, says he likes the fact that the wiki can be used by anyone. "The bar to participating is very low," he said. "You don't have to have any skills other than typing."...
"You just have to do enough things well enough and cheaply enough," says Clay Shirky, a software guru who is an adjunct professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. "It's the attack-from-below strategy."