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Microsoft is testing a microblogging service called OfficeTalk that is much like Twitter. The service is designed for the enterprise and appears it will be offered as an on-premise service.
OfficeTalk is being developed by OfficeLabs, the Microsoft lab for testing internally developed ideas.
The service looks almost identical to Twitter. Microsoft says themselves that they are in the very early stages of development and because of this "the OfficeTalk microblogging experience itself looks very similar to other well-known services."
Microsoft is testing the service pretty much internally but is now accepting external requests from companies that want to join the pilot program.
Microsoft has a few screen shots of the OfficeTalk user interface. People create profiles. They communicate in 140 characters or less. You read the message of the people you follow. It includes a search functionality to find people on the service.
A company feed shows the posts of all the people who are posting. Like Twitter, you can see the person's profile, the number of mentions, posts, followers and people who the user is following. It also has a url shortening service and threaded conversations they call comments.
Microsoft is pretty late to the market with OfficeTalk. Socialtext, Socialcast, Yammer and a host of others have been offering their services for at least a year. It could be a service that integrates with Sharepoint or the Office suite.
OfficeTalk is very early in development but it's clear that Microsoft is seeking to differentiate by offering it as an on-premise service. The reality is that Microsoft will continue to offer on-premise and cloud-based services for a long time across a good part of its product line. So why limit OfficeTalk to on-premise? We are sure that will change. A microblogging service is a natural cloud offering.
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Very late indeed, looks extremely similar to Twitter. What Twitter lacks is comments for each tweet, or conversation trail
Status.net can do so much more and has been around for long time, long before even twitter and used by companies like Mozilla and Motorola. So Microsoft is actually copying an open-source product - a way to go :)
I pretty much see the place of the office talk somewhere in Outlook/Messenger.
This is not the first time Microsoft is coming late to a party - IE was not the first browser too, but it prevailed, so they will cope with this talk too :)
Why Microsoft coming late to the market with OfficeTalk.
How is this different than http://identi.ca/ ???
Identica is status.net open source project. It can easily be deployed on-premise or online and all that you require is a LAMP server (which BTW, it's free). So one has to ask not only why are they coming late to the game but what are they bringing to the table that's fresh and/or new?
Don't quite get the comment about integration with SharePoint. Office Talk is on-premise, SharePoint is off-site.
That's kind of pathetic.
1) Twitter strength relies in its integration to mainly everything. Not the case here.
2) A lot of similar services are already in the market
3) What do they mean by "the company feed as well as your follower's feed?"
4) Threaded comments must be taken cautiously, the chatroom syndrome is never far
Will we pay for that? I wouldn't.
"How is this different than http://identi.ca/???"
It's integrated into Office - duh!
And I would not be surprised if Microsoft gives it away for free just to kill off corporate Status.net and Yammer. It used to do that in teh past - seems like a valid business strategy.
Lotus Connections has "status updates/microblogging" well integrated with other very useful services that are part of the Lotus Connections offering.
It integrates quite nicely with other offerings from Lotus (Sametime, Notes, etc...) and has a sweet REST API allowing you to integrate functionality into other systems.
@ Jeremy Murray-Wakefield - I don't know what you are referring to about Sharepoint being off-site. First, a vast majority of Sharepoint systems are on-site. Second, what technical limitation precludes integrating off-site and on-site services?
What about OSS http://sharetronix.com guys?
Open Source, groups, multimedia support, not just short URL and 140 text, software or saas? and lots more like multiple languages ;)
That's a valid concern. It may be how Microsoft begins treating most of these services.
Cant Microsoft come up with something new this has been done big time, Twitter and all the open source versions.
Microblogging is quickly becoming a powerful way for communication and officetalk is sort of Twitter's blogging service that is helpful in business.Seems like Microsoft is copying ideas of others.
You say, Microsoft is going to copy ideas. And the other Twitter clones don't copy? So please stop flaming Microsoft...I'm sure, business people without so much knowledge in Web and Social Media would use it.
And twitter is nothing more than a skinned IRC channel, or a public ICQ, or a dumb downed blog system. Now not saying MS isn't taking a note and copying, but that doesn't mean they won't innovate. The bigger key is its premise only, which is key for businesses.
For example the CEO does a Monday post the whole company looks at.
Your team lets say IT has various projects, you can throw quick short status updates around. Like completed phone install at sara's desk. It's more of a global persistent chat system. Something MS doesn't offer internally, and this is not something I really want off premises cause it could have sensitive information being passed around. Intergrate it with Office, and give it a good admin console, security layers driven off Active Directory, and you suddenly give a commonly tool the ability to live inside of an enterprise.
Someone said it right : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw
It can easily be deployed on-premise or online and all that you require is a LAMP server (which BTW, it's free). So one has to ask not only why are they coming late to the game but what are they bringing to the table that's fresh and/or new?
How could we bilieve that the time of 'Web 3.0' is coming?
Wolfram Alpha just launched, but we don't know what will happen in the search engine world.
It seems that twitter conquers everywhere. But it truly change my life?? NO.
Many widgets come and gone.
This is not the first time Microsoft is coming late to a party - IE was not the first browser too, but it prevailed, so they will cope with this talk too
Microblogging is quickly becoming a powerful way for communication and officetalk is sort of Twitter's blogging service that is helpful in business.Seems like Microsoft is copying ideas of others.