I keep a list of all of the social software vendors I talk to and as I was updating it this morning I realized that it might prove useful to provide it here. Now it’s certainly not ranked in any way, nor is it complete. I’m sure there are some companies that I’ve left off, and if you know of any please put them in the comments. The solutions for social business use are evolving rapidly and there are new offerings popping up all of the time and the more established social vendors are consolidating. I also expect that larger enterprise vendors will do their share of roll ups this year, as evidenced by Salesforce.com’s recent acquisition of Radian6. For basic categories I’m using what is a loose interpretation of a social taxonomy that we (IDC) plan to publish later this summer. I won’t provide the detail for each, but here’s a brief guide:
- Social Software: Broad social enabling technologies including collaboration, social networking, and other enterprise 2.0 software.
- Social CRM: Customer facing social solutions
- Community Management: Software than enables effective management of a customer community
- Support Channels: Software that provides a connection between traditional support software and public social channels like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.
- Sales Intelligence: Software that facilitates the collection and analysis of social data in the context of sales prospecting and sales execution
- Social Marketing Automation: Software that assist in the execution and optimization of social marketing campaigns across multiple social channels.
- Socialytics: Applications that collect and analyze social data to support decision making.
- Commerce: Software that enables the use of social concepts in some phase of commerce, both on and off line and including BtoB and BtoC.
- Innovation Management: Solutions that enable companies to more effectively manage the product development process to involve a broader set of stakeholders including customers and employees, often employing crowdsourcing / ideasourcing concepts.
Social Business Solutions |
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Social Software (including e2.0 and collaboration) |
Social CRM |
Socialytics |
Commerce |
Innovation Management |
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Community Management |
Support Channels |
Sales Intelligence |
Social Marketing Automation |
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Jive Software |
Lithium Technologies |
Salesforce.com |
Oracle |
Hearsay Social |
Radian6 / Salesforce.com |
Ariba |
BrightIdea |
Moxie |
Jive Software |
Attensity |
Salesforce.com |
Crowd Factory |
SAS Institute |
ShopIgniter |
Spigit |
IBM Lotus |
Get Satisfaction |
Oracle |
InsideView |
Mzinga |
SAP Business Objects |
INGage Networks |
uservoice |
Kick Apps |
Sword/Ciboodle |
RightNow |
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Attensity |
Trampoline Systems |
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INGage Networks |
Powered |
RightNow |
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Awareness |
Attensity |
Groupon |
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INgage Networks |
Communispace |
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Lithium |
LivingSocial |
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Mzinga |
Telligent |
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INGage Networks |
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SocialText |
LiveWorld |
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BlueKiwi |
Joomla |
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Socialcast |
INGage Networks |
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Yammer |
Mzinga |
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Rypple |
SocialText |
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CrowdCast |
LiveWorld |
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Newsgator |
IBM Lotus Connections |
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Salesforce.com |
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CoHuman |
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Mainsoft |
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Central Desktop |
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Huddle |
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Sococo |
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Vidyo |
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Cisco |
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Meetzi |
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Itensil |
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Clearvale / Broadvision |
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Novell Vibe |
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So there’s my list, who did I miss?

Good list, Michael! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Hi Michael – don’t forget IGLOO Software, a community platform for building social intranets and social extranets. Under the above classification scheme, we fit under social software/enterprise collaboration & community management solutions for customer communities.
Hi, Michael – great idea to publish this list. “Social” is still a confusing term to many in the enterprise space. I hope you’ll take a look at Appian (www.appian.com) and add us to the list. Appian is a business process management software vendor with a huge jump-start on both social and mobile (not to mention cloud) BPM. Specifically regarding social, our opinion is that social in the enterprise must be strictly routed in the context of business events – both human and system – in order to deliver business value. Otherwise, you’ve just got another time-wasting platform for employees to make lunch plans, or discuss the latest movie they have seen. Appian uses a familiar Facebook-style interface to create personalized and subscribable event streams strictly in a business context. As importantly, user can not only view these business process events, but take action on them (collaborate, view underlying data, launch a process or case) directly from the interface. On the desktop or on any popular mobile device – iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android.
Sorry for the long note. Would love to see Appian on your list.
-Ben
Dear Michael
Just wanted to include sambaash 2.0 platform, http://www.sambaash.com
Sambaash 2.0 platform combines social media, online communities and collaborative economy to enable business to create and nurture your own purpose built communities. sambaash is one of the up coming players in the Asian region…
Great piece, just one note, your table above seems to be a bit compacted and not formatted 100%, hard to see what is on the far right. Thanks.