Have you heard about the concept of federating the social Web? If not, it is, essentially, the idea of expanding the social experience beyond a specific social network.
According to Monica Wilkinson, the Engineering Director at Socialcast, the concept has emerged since users want to have the same type of experiences all over the Web.
“No matter where you go, you want to bring your friends with you and have social contacts,” she said.
For example, if a user checks in on Foursquare, it shows the activity on Twitter as well. It, ultimately, helps users connect with more people, which give them more information to help as they make decisions.
As a business solution in this space, Socialcast connects people and applications together to meet business goals. It is an enterprise activity stream engine that helps to fulfill internal goals within a business. It also serves as a brand-monitoring tool.
Socialcast also integrates into sites such as Microsoft’s SharePoint and Salesforce in order to bring employees together on projects and systems. The tracking aspect of the service gives businesses valuable insights and data about their goals.
Because the idea of federating the social Web is still new, there are multiple possibilities. At this point, the communication is very unidirectional. Going back to the Foursquare/Twitter example from above, a user cannot respond on Twitter and have the comment appear on Foursquare.
For this reason, Wilkinson believes a 2-way communication model is the next step. Socialcast is working in this direction and hopes to reach its goal to allow information to truly flow.
How does the concept of federating the social Web benefit your business?