Online Community Platform Company and Product Update – 1H 2009
A Good Stretch in a Down Economy
By Matthew D. Lees, Vice President and Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group, August 20, 2009

NETTING IT OUT

This is our third semi-annual update of companies and products in the online community and social networking space.

Our watch list now includes 15 companies, with Bayspire, Ingeniux, Passenger, and Spigit joining Awareness, HiveLive, Jive Software, Leverage Software, Lithium Technologies, LiveWorld, Mzinga, Pluck, Powered,

Small World Labs, and Telligent. (Blogtronix and Webcrossing, with its product line now licensed and supported by Bayspire, have left the list.) For these companies, we look at how they fared during the first half of 2009 with regard to customer acquisition, product lines, service offerings, pricing, business and technology partnerships, financial performance, and organizational structure.

Results for the first half of 2009 were mostly positive. After a mixed 2H 2008, many companies saw increased customer acquisition and consequently stronger revenues; several reported record earnings. After some reductions in force from late 2008 and early 2009, organizational stability returned, and hiring is strong as of this writing. This bodes well for the rest of the year. Capital investment is down as compared to a year ago—only one vendor raised funds from outside investors in 1H 2009—but with all-but frozen credit markets and investment in high-tech companies down in general, there were no real expectations of such investment anyway.

Product development continued dramatically, with new releases from virtually every company. Platform enhancements and additions were across the board, although there was widespread focus on community and business analytics, and integration with the larger social Web (particularly Facebook and Twitter).

ONLINE COMMUNITY PLATFORMS: FIRST HALF CALENDAR YEAR 2009

Watch List

It remains no easy task to decide which companies and products to include and which not to. The admittedly informal considerations we look for are companies and products that (1) do—or can—support large-scale online customer communities, and (2) have a track record of doing so.

Even with their similarities, the companies we cover here are not a homogeneous group. For sure, there is some overlap in their target markets, growth strategies, partner collaboration, R&D philosophy, pricing models, service offerings, and so on. But differences abound in each of these areas as well, as we will discuss below.

The same is true of the platforms themselves. While they all provide more or less similar core components for enabling customer communities and social networks (e.g., forums, blogs, search, profile management, administrative tools, widgets and APIs, etc.), their technology architectures and feature sets vary, as do the built-in workflows (e.g., for moderation) and the degrees of access and control they give clients (e.g., for customization). Most are provided on-demand, while others are designed for on-premise use. And some integrate out-of-the-box with third-party applications, while others require custom integration.

Adobe Groups

© 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated

Illustration 1. Adobe Groups (http://groups.adobe.com) runs on HiveLive’s LiveConnect community platform. Adobe Groups is Adobe’s worldwide online community forum for designers, developers, and business and creative professionals.

In a less rigorous way, we do look at many other vendors and platforms that support online communities and social networks that are not covered in this report. These include wikis (e.g., Atlassian, Socialtext, Wetpaint), collaboration-based applications (e.g., IBM Lotus Connections, Igloo Software, Microsoft SharePoint), social networking systems (e.g., Groupsites and Ning), and others. We may include some of these companies and products in future updates, and we look to your perspective on which of these—or other—companies are of interest.

In fact, this update includes three companies new to our watch list: Ingeniux, Passenger, and Spigit. Well, four, if you count Bayspire, a new entity which has acquired the rights to the Webcrossing product line (Webcrossing, itself, while still in business, has gotten out of the community and social media space, and is therefore not a company we will continue to track). Blogtronix declined to participate in this go-round. So our watch list now includes the following companies (covered in detail this report):

• HiveLive (www.hivelive.com)

• Jive Software (www.jivesoftware.com)

• Lithium Technologies (www.lithium.com)

• LiveWorld (www.liveworld.com)

• Mzinga (www.mzinga.com)

• Passenger (www.thinkpassenger.com) – NEW

• Powered (www.powered.com)

• Spigit (www.spigit.com) – NEW

• Awareness (www.awarenessnetworks.com)

• Bayspire (www.bayspire.com)

• Ingeniux (www.ingeniux.com) – NEW

• Leverage Software (www.leveragesoftware.com)

• Pluck (www.pluck.com)

• Small World Labs (www.smallworldlabs.com)

• Telligent (www.telligent.com)

What’s New in These Reports

Industry analyses are ever evolving in both their content and format. This update includes the following additions:

• Customer Communities. About one third of the companies on our watch list provide online community resources for their customers. These communities, which invariably run on their own platform, are typically for some subset of these four groups of people: (1) community managers, administrations, and moderators, (2) software developers, (3) business partners (such as digital and interactive marketing agencies), and (4) the general public. Some of these communities are visible to the public (although with registration required to participate beyond reading posts and comments), and some are accessible only to clients. For those companies that provide a peer-to-peer community area for one or more of these groups, a brief description and URL are provided in that company’s “Customers” section.

• Customer Conferences. About one third of the companies on our watch list also run one or more customer get-togethers, such as an annual conference. Most of these events are in person, but virtual events are showing some traction. For those companies that run such a conference, a brief description is provided (with date and location, if available) in that company’s “Customers” section.

• Client Community Screen Shots. Where available, a screen shot of a community that launched during the relevant time period—in this case, during the first half of 2009—is provided.

This report continues...