I expect to see a change in the market for social software this year. Less so from all the new competitors that seem to enter daily, but more so from the typical challenges that face business everyday: explaining the value of the investments they make.

When it comes to social software solutions the past 2 years have been quite fun. Most companies have viewed software, such as ours, a checkbox requirement on the 'to-do' list from the CEO or CMO. This will continue through 2008, but organizations are also making the shift towards looking for the Return on Investment too. We're eager to make that shift with them.

While I don’t think many of our customers yet realize just how valuable ‘communities’ are, I happen to be of the opinion that social networks/communities happen to be a gold mine of customer data. Typically marketers will pay astronomical amounts of money to market research firms for demographic information on their customers. Whereas in a community these individuals self-profile and provide all manner of data (gender, age, location) in addition to product feedback. There are obviously some early adopter companies that get this[1], but they are few and far between right now.

This data mining/analysis/customer behavior question is something that Telligent is focusing on and investing in this year – because frankly it seems no one else has realized how valuable all this data really is. Our first set of investments will be in Community Server 2008, our Enterprise Social Networking platform, as well as in our new Harvest product. 

I'm personally excited to watch this transformation take place. At Telligent we've always had a strong focus on providing and helping our customers prove real business value for the solutions we deliver. I'm eager to see the rest of the market catch up while our customers benefit.

[1] Wall Street Journal Article, The New Focus Group: Online Communities