Present.ly: Truly Valuable Enterprise Status Microblogging
I’ve generally made no secret of the fact that I’m not a fan of Yammer. It’s generally accepted as the default solution for businesses who want to implement a Twitter-like solution for the enterprise.
The problem, at least for me, is that it brings very little value to the equation that wasn’t already there. There are a wide variety of tools that can already accomplish the task without applying the hammer that is status microblogging.
You’ve got Google Groups (or any myriad of other listserv type utilities) if you need group discussion and collaboration. You’ve got Salesforce for maintaining a large group with the added benefit of corporate workflow. You’ve got bootcamp for messaging style interaction (or ICQ for the enterprise, something I used years ago and got the job done).
This problem of group collaboration inside a corporation is something that keeps getting needlessly solved year after year.
At SxSW this year, though, I did discover a utility that took the idea of status microblogging for the enterprise and made it into something I’d consider implementing myself in certain situations: Present.ly.
The utility includes advanced security and caching utilities that allow for quick access without fear of communications being intercepted (it’s apparently good enough for the US State Department). Of course, it includes groups as well as a public timeline within the organization.
Most interesting to me was the advanced messaging features that allowed attachment of files and code snippets. It was definitely developed with programmers in mind, and it included a wide array languages that it supported.
Essentially, if you want to send a bit of code to a fellow developer, you pull down the language, and insert it. It’s formatted, highlighted, and sent to the members of the group without breaking the page around it. The API is fully compliant with the standards established with Twitter’s API, so programming third party apps for it shouldn’t be very much of a challenge.
Definitely check out the interview embedded above (or download the MP4).
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