NewsGator Adds Value to Enterprise Social Computing Features for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Market Wire, June, 2008

Enterprise 2.0 Conference -- NewsGator Technologies, Inc. today announced the general availability of Social Sites 2.0 , a major upgrade for NewsGator's social computing solution for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Social Sites 2.0 offers new social capabilities to Office SharePoint Server 2007, allowing users to more easily interact, collaborate and find the people and content they need to do their work better and more efficiently.

"The combined Social Sites and SharePoint Server 2007 solution has evolved our intranet into a social network ," said Joe Toth, assistant vice president for CME Federal Credit Union. "It allows for users to add colleagues into their profile and exchange information across departmental boundaries. These features, along with the other social computing capabilities provided by the solution, have led to improved productivity by saving our employees an average of 30 minutes per day."

" Social networking trends in the consumer market have triggered enormous interest by business and IT strategists who believe that similar solutions can be leveraged internally to improve information sharing, collaboration and community-building efforts," said Mike Gotta, principal analyst for Burton Group. "The challenge confronting many decision makers is how to best balance the need to leverage existing infrastructure while not missing out on solutions delivered by many best-of-breed vendors."

Social Sites and Office SharePoint Server 2007 deliver enterprise-class social computing capabilities that enable businesses to build communities and internal social networks while leveraging existing IT investments and maintaining appropriate security. Social Sites integrates seamlessly with Office SharePoint Server 2007 to add value to its social computing features with collaboration tools, enhanced tagging, RSS feed subscriptions and management, colleague tracking features and content mash-up capabilities.

"SharePoint Server 2007 provides businesses with a social computing solution that delivers positive business results today while establishing a platform that can be easily extended to meet future Enterprise 2.0 needs," said Deb Bannon, senior product manager for Microsoft's SharePoint Server Partner Group. "Social Sites and SharePoint Server 2007 facilitate collaboration and simplify information discovery by turning intranets and portals into social hubs. This not only makes it easier for workers to do their jobs, but gives businesses a huge competitive advantage by enabling them to become leaner, smarter and more efficient through collaboration."

The 2.0 release of Social Sites will provide enterprises with the following advanced community and social network capabilities (please visit http://www.newsgator.com/Business/SocialSites/Default.aspx for more information):

Communities

--  Allows employees to easily share ideas, information and documents by
    enabling them to create ad hoc communities around common interests, areas
    of research, projects, etc.
--  Provides for easy discovery of groups via customized recommendations,
    tag clouds, search, and lists of recently created and popular communities.
--  Offers a discussion component that includes rich e-mail integration,
    which allows users to participate in a community without ever logging in to
    the site.
--  Simplifies content additions by allowing content to be tagged into the
    community, added via social bookmarks and RSS feeds, or uploaded to a
    community document store.
--  Offers chronological views of community activity from both a single
    community and consolidated from all communities a user belongs to.
    

Social Networks

--  Provides employees with social network graphs based on both explicit
    and implied connections, making discovery of content and colleagues easier.
--  Shows each user their strongest connections based on common content,
    interests, and intranet activity.
--  Recommends colleagues to a user based on common community membership,
    tags, and RSS subscriptions.
    

About NewsGator Social Sites

NewsGator Social Sites provides behind-the-firewall social computing and enterprise RSS capabilities that lower IT support costs, improve productivity, and increase knowledge sharing. Social Sites integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to enable enterprises to build communities and internal social networks while leveraging existing investments and maintaining appropriate security. Social Sites drives portal adoption by keeping content fresh and relevant, enhancing usability, simplifying content and expertise discovery and bringing users back through precision notifications. Social Sites features include tacitly built profiles; social network graphs; communities; advanced tagging and tag clouds; RSS feeds, subscriptions and management; notifications; and colleague tracking capabilities. For more information, please visit: http://www.newsgator.com/Business/SocialSites/Default.aspx .