ESS Glossary

Glossary of Enterprise Social Software Terms

Blog

Opinion offering on the web

Collaborative Software

is software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work. Such software systems as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki belong in this category. Groupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration—communication tools, conferencing tools and collaborative management (Co-ordination) tools. 1 Some examples www.basecamp.com and www.webex.com

Contact Management Software

is software that helps you aggregate and analyze data about the people you know: not only the name, phone and email, but also notes and personality, you can keep details of past interactions and develop a comprehensive profile; some examples are www.plaxo.com and www.goodcontacts.com

Enterprise Social Capital Management Software

is software that captures the capabilities of the human capital (down to the individual) and mapping it to the flow of information and knowledge in an organization, many times incorporating social network analysis tools, for example www.visiblepath.com and www.tacitsoftware.com

Enterprise Social Networking Software

is a suite of applications built upon a platform that will provide several of the following; blogging, people search, social network analysis, tagging, wiki, collaboration/groupware, some examples are www.connectbeam.com and www.ibm.com and www.smallworldlabs.com and www.atlassian.com

Folksonomy

A folksonomy is a user generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve Web pages, photographs, Web links and other web content using open ended labels called tags. Typically, folksonomies are Internet-based, but their use may occur in other contexts as well. The process of folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easy to search, discover, and navigate over time. A well-developed folksonomy is ideally accessible as a shared vocabulary that is both originated by, and familiar to, its primary users. Two widely cited examples of websites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and del.icio.us, Source: Wikipedia

Network Analysis

and its close cousin traffic analysis, has significant use in intelligence. By monitoring the communication patterns between the network nodes, its structure can be established. This can be used for uncovering insurgent networks of both hierarchical and leaderless nature.

People Search

web sites and social networks that allow the user to query the database for an individual by name www.zoominfo.com and www.jigsaw.com

RSS

is originally “RDF site Summary,” but also commonly said to mean “Really Simple Syndication,” a standard data format for publishing and syndicating headline sand short content. Usually used for distribution of blog post. 2 Some examples are www.newgator.com and www.feedburner.com

Social network analysis

maps relationships between individuals in social networks.1 Some examples are www.visiblepath.com and www.tacit.com

Social Network Search Engines

are a class of search engines that use social network intelligence, filters and other input with the intent of improving the search results, some examples are www.newstrove.com and www.eurekster.com

Social Network Services

is social software specifically focused on the building and verifying of online social networks for whatever purpose. Many social networking services are also blog hosting services. As of 2005, there are over three hundred known social networking web sites. MySpace, Classmates.com, Facebook and Friendster are some well known examples. 1 Some professional examples are www.linkedin.com and www.ecademy.com

Social Network Services Software

is software that you can use to start a any social network you like, corporate, private or public, some examples are www.ning.com and www.cerado.com

WebForum

Web enabled online discussion group with potentially threaded conversations.

Wiki

A Wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a site, or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site WikiWikiWeb (the original wiki) and online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. Souce: Wikipedia