In this edition of Living In The Cloud Series, I am going to talk about Socialwok, a social networking layer on top of Google Apps for your domains. For someone like me who loves Google Apps because of my love for Gmail, I always wanted a social networking layer on top of Google Apps to collaborate efficiently with my partners in many different countries. So far, I didn’t come across something which doesn’t disrupt my workflow. When I came across Socialwok, I jumped in reluctantly but I was pretty amazed at how well it has been integrated with Google Apps. If you are a Google Apps user, I strongly recommend you to try out Socialwok.

If you are a business using Google Apps, imagine having a secure private social network on top of it so that you can collaborate seamlessly with your employees, partners and outside clients from within Google Apps. Imagine the productivity gain from such an arrangement. Socialwok fits these needs and comes out as a winner. Unlike Zoho (disclaimer: Zoho is the exclusive sponsor of this blog but this is my independent opinion), Google doesn’t offer social features as a part of Google Apps offering. Socialwok closes the hole.

As it is customary in this series, I will add a video of the app below

 

As I usually do in this series, I will list out the pros and cons from my point of view.

Pros:

  • Seamlessly integrates with Google Apps. You can insert all of the Google Apps properties and Google Wave inside Socialwok app
  • Runs on top of Google App Engine, thereby guaranteeing the infrastructure stability of Google
  • Awesome mobile version makes it more useful for the modern day business
  • Easy one click publishing options to other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Cons:

  • Still not ready for production stage but it is getting there
  • They haven’t advised the pricing yet. Though they assure you that the free version will stay and they will monetize on premium features, I would like to know what I am getting into with this app
CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

Krishnan Subramanian

Krish dons several avatars including entrepreneur in exile, analyst cum researcher, technology evangelist, blogger, ex-physicist, social/political commentator, etc.. My main focus is research and analysis on various high impact topics in the fields of Open Source, Cloud Computing and the interface between them. I also evangelize Open Source and Cloud Computing in various media outlets, blogs and other public forums. I offer strategic advise to both Cloud Computing and Open Source providers and, also, help other companies take advantage of Open Source and Cloud Computing. In my opinion, Open Source commoditized software and Cloud Computing commoditized computing resources. A combination of these two developments offers a strong competitive advantage to companies of all sizes and shapes. Due to various factors, including fear, the adoption of both Open Source and Cloud Computing are relatively slow in the business sector. So, I take it upon myself to clear any confusion in this regard and educate, enrich and advise users/customers to take advantage of the benefits offered by these technologies. I am also a managing partner in two consulting companies based in India. I blog about Open Source topics at http://open.krishworld.com and Cloud Computing related topics at http://www.cloudave.com.

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