Status Updates Now in Central Desktop

Today, we officially launched and released a fully integrated micro-blogging tool into the Central Desktop platform.  While the feature is influenced by the functionality of Twitter and Micro-Blogging, we are calling and describing the feature "Central Desktop Status Updates."

The Status Update feature accommodates our customers desire to integrate Twitter-like functions into their day-to-day activities, but for business, and more secure, and within Central Desktop.  Business-centric Status Updates brings a new dynamic to how people communicate within a collaborative environment.

Instead of a binary update that you would see in Recent Activity Log that "Isaac Uploaded a File" or "Isaac  Completed a Task", Status Updates allows the user to inject meaning and context into their activities.

For example, I can post an update to Central Desktop that "I'm giving a briefing to Rob Koplowitz from Forrester Research" or that "Isaac is trying to make a PHP class behave like an array."

These statements provide context to the activities that I'm working on - far more context and meaning than a binary statement such as "Conference Call with Forrester" or "Checked-In File."

An added value feature that we also included into Central Desktop Status Updates is the ability to also update Twitter and Facebook with your status as well!  This accommodates repetition and allows Central Desktop users to punch through the corporate firewall (in this case, Central Desktop) and connect with the outside world (in this case, Twitter and Facebook). 

[No word on LinkedIn integration yet. We have not received very good support from LinkedIn to tap into their API.  Someone tell LinkedIn to respond to our requests as our customers (and their customers) want our apps to talk together.]

As part of Central Desktop Status Updates, you can post an update via SMS text directly into Central Desktop as well!

In case you are wondering why we've "jumped on the 'Twitter-Bandwagon', let me summarize:

1. Our customers want it.
   
   
2. From a business collaboration perspective, micro-blogging is only relevant to business users in a business context - and does not belong in the public domain or in a separate application.
   
   
3. Central Desktop's Pure SaaS Social Technology Platform is about the People and our customers wanted to provide a secure way for their employees and users to leverage "Twitter-like" functionality for the purpose of business.
   
   
4. Central Desktop Status Updates bring micro-conversations "into the firewall" in a protected environment instead of in the public domain.
   
   
5. Central Desktop Status Updates eliminates the need to toggle between networks to post updates to multiple networks (Twitter, Facebook, more to come).

I'll be talking more about this topic later this week in Boston at Enterprise 2.0 (I'll be on a Panel titled, "How Twitter Changes Everything."  I'll share more details about the thought process of why we integrated Status Updates and how we were influenced by the "Twitter-Wave."

Again, this is about the people and empowering them to communicate more...too collaborate more.  As I wrote in a previous post last week about Business Adaptation, business is becoming people-centric rather than technology-centric.  Central Desktop Status Updates enables and empowers users to communicate in real-time and interact in new, relevant, contextual ways, for business.