Socialtext Redefines Wikis for the Enterprise

Socialtext, the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, announced the immediate availability of Socialtext 2.0 -- the most simple wiki to adopt, use and extend. Featuring a fundamental redesign of the user interface, Socialtext 2.0 (S2) resolves the complexity that confronts new wiki users while preserving the power of a flexible enterprise tool. S2 also provides Wiki Web Services to support both the Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) of modern enterprises and demand for innovation within Socialtext's open source community. The result is a powerful collaboration and intranet tool, as simple to use as email, but with transparent productivity benefits to the enterprise.

"Our usability research revealed that expert users love wikis for their power and flexibility, but new users needed simplicity and orientation," said Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. "At the same time, our developer community demanded more flexible ways to integrate and build upon Socialtext. The solution isn't turning the wiki into yet-another-enterprise-tool, but to raise the bar on what a wiki can be, while making it open and extensible."

Mayfield delivered a keynote talk last week at Networld/Interop New York 2006 on Enterprise 2.0 -- freeform social software for organizations. Traditional enterprise software fails both in the confluence of costs and user demands for unstructured collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 enables users to contribute knowledge in the process of getting things done more efficiently, and revealing emergent structure. Whereas traditional enterprise software only gains 40% adoption according to the Gartner Group (especially compared to the high levels of adoption of email, where 90% of collaboration currently occurs, according to IDC), Enterprise 2.0 builds upon the bottom-up demand for tools that don't get in users' way.

New wiki users can get overwhelmed with the complexity of understanding interfaces and orienting themselves. S2 simplifies orientation with a personal homepage that serves as a dashboard of activity and interest. The core "Page View" enables full-screen Wikiwyg editing, easy tagging, linking, and file attachments. "What's New" provides sortable lists and search options to find information and people in the wiki. RSS feeds are provided for every page, tag, watchlist, search and wiki. Weblogs enable one-click publishing and communication across projects.

Part of Enterprise 2.0 is facilitating SOAs, where web services enable enterprise systems to adapt to an ever-changing environment. S2 includes Wiki Web Services, a collection of SOAP and REST standard APIs. Wiki Web Services enables open source developers to innovate in the language of their choice and mashup wiki functionality with other applications. Wiki Web Services enable integration with Microsoft Office® and other best-of-breed enterprise applications.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

Socialtext 2.0 is available immediately at http://www.socialtext.com . Socialtext Personal is free for five users. Socialtext Professional hosted service starts at $95 per month for 20 users. Socialtext Enterprise appliance starts at $11,500 for 500 users. Socialtext Open is an open source distribution under a commercial-friendly open source license.

ABOUT SOCIALTEXT

Socialtext is the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, enabling enterprises to be more productive with wikis, a commons-based knowledge tool. Socialtext makes secure wikis that large global companies use for daily project communication and intranet-like needs. Wikis are group-editable websites that are private, linkable and searchable. To make wikis enterprise-friendly, Socialtext integrated email interoperability, weblogs, tags, feeds, RSS and Wikiwyg, Socialtext's easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor. More than 2,000 enterprises use Socialtext, including Dresdner Kleinwort, IKEA, Kodak, Nokia, and Symantec. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP Ventures and Omidyar Network. http://www.socialtext.com .

Media Contact: Giovanni Rodriguez 1-650-279-8415 Email Contact