The basic idea of social network software in enterprises is to get expertise where there are opportunities

The history of enterprise social network software goes back to 2003. At that time, there were only 3 main vendors – VisiblePath, Boston Consulting Group and Spoke.

The collaboration software from VisiblePathwould link people within organization so that questions were solved in no time. They mainly worked with banks and big companies. In fact, it became so popular, that in 2004 the company earned more than 15 million dollars by enterprise sales.

The second popular software was built by Boston Consulting Group. Their software spoke about ‘relationship strength’ which was the opposite of ‘degree of separation’ which is a key feature of today’s social networking software.

Spoke was most promising vendor in 2003 and had a exhibition where people could see their software. The main aim of Spoke was to make it more like a CRM platform with sales as key function. Hence this was targeted as a social media for business software.

However today many of these software (popular at that time) face a lot of competition from LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides several features that collaboration software in enterprises are providing. However, enterprise social software today gives many more opportunities such as close social networking within employees, ability to remember birthdays, organize activities within the company etc.

Another good option worth mentioning was Tacit Software which combined social networking with joining experts of similar skills.