Jive Software takes the first step towards a social enterprise app market
Jive Software, a leader in enterprise social software which recently closed a new $30 million in investment, has unveiled a new capability for its customers. With the Jive Widget Studio, users of the company's latest software release will be able to create customer OpenSocial widgets inside their enterprise collaboration space.
Similar to the Google Gadgets, Jive users will now be able to choose or create their custom widgets displaying virtually any information delivered via RSS. Jive also is providing pre-made widgets for sources such as Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo. Users will also be able to create other simple widgets such as survey forms or slideshows.
Unveilved in 2007, OpenSocial is a set of common APIs developed by Google and an array of big name partners to encourage interoperability between social networks. Enterprise adoption has been lackluster compared to the consumer side, despite the great potential for fostering greater exchange of social data in business settings. A few Jive competitors, such as Atlassian and Socialtext, have already embraced OpenSocial in a serious way.
Further adoption of the OpenSocial standard is a positive development for enterprise social software as a whole. Where it will continue to get interesting for business users is in September when Jive opens up the App Marketplace it announced in June.
The Widget Studio is the first step in Jive's plan to get third party developers exchanging applications. This will basically be similar to developer platforms in the consumer space and enterprise examples such as the Salesforce.com AppExchange. In Jive's case, we can only hope it will continue to be built using open standards such as OpenSocial and oAuth.
For a closer look at the Jive Widget Studio, be sure to check out this short video.