NewsGator News and Updates

NewsGator: Social Computing Is The New ‘Business Operating System’

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:42:04 GMT

Self-assembling Socialpedia and automated Knowledge Explorer in
NewsGator Social Sites 3.0 mark tipping point for enterprise social computing

BOSTON, June 22, 2009 – NewsGator today introduced capabilities that affirm social computing as the new operating system for business – one that eclipses the bloated email inbox as the most productive home base for knowledge workers. What e-mail and the file folder system have done since the 1980s – serve as the de facto operating system for business – enterprise social computing delivers today, and does better, going forward.

Social Sites 3.0 is a significant upgrade to NewsGator’s enterprise social computing platform, and to Enterprise 2.0 capabilities in general. Companies can sign up for beta access today to see how Social Sites transforms content, activity and social graphs into “Social Knowledge.” NewsGator’s Social Sites 3.0 release includes two breakthrough capabilities to organize valuable content and leverage reputation in large organizations:

Socialpedia – This self-assembling Wikipedia-style internal Web site is a one-stop source of knowledge generated in topic-based online communities throughout the global organization. Socialpedia leverages an improved Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 wiki experience within Social Sites communities to create a single knowledge repository with distributed ownership. A new hire can find terminology to get productive fast. A sales representative can brush up on an arcane product feature to help close the deal. HR can explain complicated concepts just once for all to see.

Knowledge Explorer – Expertise maps, which take advantage of the rich media features in Microsoft Silverlight, provide an interactive graphical snapshot of the professionals in an organization that are most informed on a selected topic. When users click on a topic in a tag cloud, the map appears with experts arranged according to their automatically calculated expertise ratings. Need an internal expert to talk to a prospect on dual-flange inverted widgets? Click on the “widgets” tag and find her. Looking for the missing link in the potential miracle drug you’re developing? Discover your overseas counterpart and get it done. The CEO needs a few slides now on New Zealand go-to-market strategy? Find the guy who knows it backwards and forwards.

These new capabilities will be included as standard features in Social Sites Enterprise which is becoming the default starting point for productivity-minded knowledge workers in large businesses.

“Emerging capabilities take aim at two powerful approaches to enterprise social interaction: the ‘broad and thin’ and the ‘narrow and deep,’ ” said Gartner Research Director Nikos Drakos. “Breadth is needed to foster connections among every user and community in the organization, and depth is needed to capture all the salient content produced by each individual user and community. A collaboration strategy and social computing suite should include both of these approaches to social knowledge.”

Beyond e-mail
Despite the growing capabilities of social computing, some knowledge workers are still hamstrung by e-mail. “Who doesn’t get frustrated with their in-box: messages pouring in faster than you can read them, disparate subjects filling the same bucket, and tortuous threads that drift off topic?” said Brian Kellner, NewsGator’s vice president of products. “ ‘Collaboration’ around email too often translates into just scheduling conference calls to figure out where the content is, who the experts are, and what they need to do. Social Sites 3.0, on the other hand, assembles content, organizes people, ranks experts, and fosters connections among everyone so you execute rather than plan. Isn’t this a better way to work? Isn’t it time for social computing to be the standard operating system for business?”

Enhancing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Social Sites 3.0 extends the capabilities of the Office SharePoint Server content management and collaboration platform by providing a Facebook-like social computing experience. It presents users with carefully selected content, connects them to important colleagues and involves them in productive communities.

“Social Sites 3.0 helps customers take their business-class social computing to the next level by presenting users with just the right content and connections at just the right time through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - the industry’s most powerful enterprise social computing platform,” said Kathleen Winder, Microsoft’s Director of SharePoint and FAST Partners. “Social Sites is a very compelling complement to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server that promises to change the way business gets done.”

To be considered for the Social Sites 3.0 beta program, email socialsites@newsgator.com.

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises and media companies leverage social computing solutions to deliver real business value. The company’s enterprise social networking and widget services are in use by hundreds of the world’s most recognized brands, including Biogen Idec, CBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and USA Today. NewsGator Social Sites and Enterprise Server give enterprises better ways to collaborate, share content, expand employee knowledge and improve productivity. NewsGator’s Widget Services and iPhone applications enable media and brand companies to better engage their audiences and extend the value of their brands through viral syndication of content. NewsGator also offers free, award-winning RSS aggregators for the Web, desktop, mobile devices and e-mail clients. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

A Six-Step Roadmap to Ensure Successful Enterprise Social Computing Adoption

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:27:15 GMT

NewsGator white paper reveals how a modicum of planning can deliver quantifiable business results and cultural transformations

DENVER, June 17, 2009 – The seismic success of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and other social computing tools often creates soaring expectations for viral adoption of social computing in business settings. While the “just build it and they will come” strategy works in the consumer world, it’s a dangerous approach for business: users may never come, or they may come and waste their time.

That’s why NewsGator, the social computing company, today released a six-step roadmap for successful enterprise social computing adoption. It’s a systematic analysis to help ensure that Enterprise 2.0 initiatives make sense to users and improve business performance exactly as intended. Thoroughly explored in a new white paper at www.newsgator.com, the six steps are:

1. Identify business problems and goals
In addition to yielding broad business benefits, you need enterprise social computing to solve concrete business problems. So first, define problems and proposed solutions using quantifiable key performance indicators. Instead of shooting for the general improvement of CRM, for example, define the problems and realistic targets. For example, with a general problem such as “Customer problem resolution is not timely,” define a specific goal such as “Reduce time to resolution by 7 percent.”

2. Define use cases to help solve business problems
Now determine the events and actions in each business process. To resolve a customer problem, for example, the use case goes like this: Customer asks a challenging product question. Account manager presents question to internal customer and product experts. Some members respond; others rate, critique and tag the responses. Account manager filters responses, answers the customer, reports the problem is solved and updates the customer support knowledge base.

3. Select the correct technologies
Now that you know the steps, you need to choose the right tools to execute them. Blogs? Wikis? Profiles? Social bookmarking? Communities? Discussion forums? Tagging? Microblogging? Activity streams? Status updates? Voting? Rating? As the account manager in our example above presents her customer question to colleagues, she may use a discussion forum, a people tag search, a content tag search or a combination of the three. Experiment during the pilot phase and choose the best toolset for you.

4. Publish best practices for use
While some believe enterprise social computing should be free of any rules at all, guidelines can clearly enhance results. Examples of best practice guidelines include:
• Prior to creating a community, clearly explain its purpose and ground rules.
• Tag articles with terms that are meaningful to the group, not simply reflective of the content, e.g., use “financial services sales leads” vs. “banking.”
• Encourage discussion participants to stay on topic.

5. Identify obstacles to participation
Users may resist enterprise social computing for any number of reasons: they’re already on Facebook, they fear “publicizing” their ideas, or management is stuck in old-school, hierarchical thinking. If you take a minute to anticipate and plan for obstacles, they become much easier to overcome.

6. Identify desired cultural transformations
As obstacles are overcome and employees fully engage in enterprise social computing, Enterprise 2.0 can dramatically transform a company’s culture. It can improve transparency, information distribution, democratization and knowledge creation. These transformations require a true willingness to change and some support. Consider working with a cross-section of employees to: prepare a mission statement for your desired cultural transformation; identify examples of activities that illustrate the transformation in action; and name good role models for the transformation and their traits. Identify stakeholders that may resist change and understand why.

“Any organization can benefit from this flexible roadmap for enterprise social computing adoption,” said Karyn German, NewsGator vice president of enterprise practice management. “Although the commitment may seem daunting, it boils down to good planning. Organizations that follow a model like this are quite likely to reap the many benefits that enterprise social computing can deliver, and reap them quickly.”

Visit NewsGator's website to download “A Roadmap for Successful Adoption of Social Computing in the Enterprise”. Also, come see NewsGator in Booth #505 at Enterprise 2.0 at the Westin Boston Waterfront, June 22-25, 2009.

NewsGator’s enterprise social computing thought leadership is the product of thousands of conversations with Fortune 1000 companies planning and executing Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. NewsGator Social Sites is enterprise social computing’s most comprehensive platform. When coupled with Microsoft SharePoint, it includes all the social computing capabilities required for improved collaboration, innovation, expertise discovery, recruiting, retention and knowledge management.

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises and media companies leverage social computing solutions to deliver real business value. The company’s enterprise social networking and widget services are in use by hundreds of the world’s most recognized brands, including All Things Digital, Biogen Idec, CBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and USA Today. NewsGator Social Sites and Enterprise Server give enterprises better ways to collaborate, share content, expand employee knowledge and improve productivity. NewsGator’s Widget Services and iPhone applications enable media and brand companies to better engage their audiences and extend the value of their brands through viral syndication of content. NewsGator also offers free, award-winning RSS aggregators for the Web, desktop, mobile devices and e-mail clients. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

NewsGator is ‘Colorado Company to Watch’

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:23 GMT

Denver company perfectly positioned for social computing revolution

DENVER, May 27, 2009 – NewsGator, a Denver-based social computing company that creates Facebook-style networks for businesses and boosts ad revenue for publishers, has been named to the inaugural class of Colorado Companies to Watch.

The awards program honors 50 second-stage Colorado companies “that demonstrate high performance in the marketplace or exhibit innovative products or processes.” Second-stage refers to companies beyond the startup phase and facing growth, rather than survival, issues.

“All computing is becoming social, so we’ve been fortunate to be well positioned through the recent downturn and poised for even faster growth during the imminent recovery,” said J.B. Holston, NewsGator CEO. “Social computing is fundamental for companies striving to do more with less but also as the means by which innovation is accomplished”.

The company (www.newsgator.com) is one of 50 winners to be announced Friday, June 5, and honored at a ceremony Thursday, June 25. Colorado Companies to Watch is presented by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade in association with private and public organizations dedicated to supporting second-stage businesses in the state.

A host of industry leaders have adopted NewsGator’s enterprise social computing software in the past 12 months, including two of the world’s top three banks, two of the top three U.S. manufacturers of network and communications equipment, four of the top 15 U.S. pharmaceutical companies, and two of the top seven U.S. aerospace and defense companies, among many others.

The company is responsible for:

FeedDemon, one of the most popular Windows RSS readers on the planet;
NetNewsWire, an RSS reader for the iPhone and one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 iPhone Apps of 2008;
Content syndication services that proliferate published content to eager consumers, boosting publisher revenue;
Social Sites, an enterprise computing environment that lets companies activate “Facebook for the Enterprise.”; and
The Internet’s largest repository of free RSS content, the result of NewsGator’s pioneering RSS reading/delivery services. The company adds 9.1 million new articles to the repository every day, indexing and aggregating 4.6 million feeds and archiving 4 years of historical content.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Microsoft Alliance Taps NewsGator for Enterprise Social Computing Capabilities

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:39:02 GMT

NewsGator joins Microsoft Technology Center Alliances Program, exposing organizations around the world to the power of NewsGator Social Sites

DENVER, May 12, 2009 – NewsGator has joined an exclusive circle of software providers working through Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) to develop powerful solutions for business customers around the world.

The 18 MTCs provide customers with experts and resources to envision, plan, build, deploy, operate and optimize secure customized computing solutions based on Microsoft and partner technologies. NewsGator’s membership in the Microsoft Technology Center Alliances Program gives new customers hands-on experience with the power of NewsGator’s Social Sites™ enterprise social computing software working in concert with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 (MOSS). The MTC then guides customers through planning, deployment and optimization.

Noticing the enhanced social computing capabilities that Social Sites could provide the MTC offerings, program architects nominated NewsGator for the alliance, conducted a software trial, and, seeing abundant benefits, extended a partnership offer signed by both parties. The alliance makes NewsGator one of just 14 software partners in the alliance, and the only social computing provider.

“NewsGator’s Social Sites is a perfect complement to Office SharePoint Server 2007 for customers who want to reap the benefits of enterprise social computing,” said Chuck McCann, Microsoft’s Worldwide MTC Alliances Program Director. “Social Sites connects people, content and communities in a business context, cutting costs, improving efficiency and boosting overall performance for organizations.”

MTCs exist in the following locations: Chicago, IL; Waltham, MA; Reston, VA; Mountain View, CA; Dallas, TX; Irvine, CA; New York, NY; Atlanta, GA; Dublin, Ireland; Thames Valley, UK; Dubai, UAE; Munich, Germany; Paris, France; Taipei, Taiwan; Beijing, China; Cologne, Germany; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Bangalore, India.

“The inclusion of Social Sites in the MTCs is a testament to the added value it brings to the already robust social computing feature set provided by Office SharePoint Server 2007. When people try Social Sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, they immediately understand the business value of enterprise social computing and often regret they waited so long to get on board,” said Dave Keller, NewsGator General Manager. “Our presence in MTCs around the world gives organizations another way to try social computing with no risk and explore the specific ways it can help their businesses.”

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

NewsGator Unveils Social Sites 2.7 With New Features For Enterprise Social Computing

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:15:09 GMT

New ‘Social Sites Ideas’ functionality embeds innovation management into social computing workflow

DENVER, May 7, 2009 – Innovation drives recoveries of companies and entire economies, yet far too many good ideas die on the vine. That’s why NewsGator today released Social Sites 2.7 with groundbreaking new functionality for social computing: innovation management.

Called Social Sites Ideas, the new solution captures, vets and advances fresh, new employee suggestions for improving business results. It is ideal for product development, cost reduction programs, business process improvements, customer service enhancements, going green and more. NewsGator Social Sites 2.7 is the latest version of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007-based enterprise social computing product that connects people with colleagues and content in topic-based communities.

Social Sites Ideas makes it easy for employees to offer new ideas for consideration throughout the entire organization. Colleagues can “vote up” an idea they like, invoking the wisdom of the crowd and add detailed comments. Employees are notified of relevant new ideas, votes and comments. The best ideas are promoted to management for final review and implementation. Social Sites Ideas is the only innovation management solution fully integrated into an enterprise social computing environment. Thus, innovation is an organic part of the social computing workflow, not a siloed application, with noteworthy actions reported in activity streams.

“All companies have great ideas, but only the organizations that have an easy, established process for identifying, evaluating and advancing them can truly benefit from those ideas,” said NewsGator Vice President of Products, Brian Kellner. “That’s innovation. Since all computing is becoming social, enterprise social computing and Social Sites in particular are natural platforms for innovation management. Social Sites Ideas adds the necessary structure to drive the innovation process without adding a costly new enterprise application.”

Why innovation management matters
It’s not enough to throw money at innovation. R&D investment and innovation success don’t always correlate, say researchers: “[M]ore spending doesn’t necessarily lead to smarter spending or better results,” Kevin Dehoff, Booz Allen Vice President, declared in 2007 with respect to the company’s Global 1000 Innovation study. “With increased competition leading to thousands of new products being released every year, companies must improve their innovation processes to succeed.” Disciplined processes around ideation, project selection, product development and commercialization are indicators of success, the report found.

Using Social Sites Ideas, employees can view or search proposed innovations within individual communities or across them all, and can filter by an idea’s popularity or status. Managers can blog about the progression of ideas through the discussion and implementation phases, and user profiles include a history of ideas that the user has proposed. Organizations can create private communities, or “campaigns,” for confidential idea cultivation in closed groups. Any community can further collaborate on new ideas in dedicated wikis.

Smart companies encourage innovative thinking and don’t let great ideas dissolve into the ether. Yet for many companies, installing an entirely new enterprise innovation management application is overkill, especially in this economy. With Social Sites Ideas, NewsGator has met a need for structured innovation processes in the context of the way people are already working, or soon will be: enterprise social computing.

A Fortune 15 financial services giant used a pre-release version of the Social Sites Ideas platform to name an important new corporate portal. The task took a week and a half instead of the usual three months. It involved a wide swath of stakeholders (employees) instead of an outside marketing agency, and the company saved $100,000 to $500,000 in agency fees. Employees gained a sense of ownership and immediately began proposing other valuable ideas for the company.

As a complement to Office SharePoint Server 2007, NewsGator Social Sites leverages Enterprise 2.0’s most popular computing foundation. “Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a robust application platform for social computing that enables partners like NewsGator to extend Office SharePoint Server 2007 with advanced social computing features,” said Owen Allen, Microsoft Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint ISV partners. “Social Sites Ideas is a good example of the type of social business application that can be built on top of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to help an enterprise enhance their competitive position.”

More about Social Sites 2.7
Other new features in Social Sites 2.7 include:

Activity Stream Email Digest: Users can now stay connected to enterprise social networks via enterprise or mobile email through an email digest that reports colleague and community activities every 24 hours.
New Web Parts: display a social network graph of a user’s implicit professional relationships; a list of the colleagues following a particular user; and, for administrators, user activity over the past 30 days.
New community features: Community creators can add blog, wiki and announcement modules to communities, and site administrators can add or limit these additions.
A simple yet powerful RSS reader: Users can easily read, mark, tag, clip, rate and initiate discussions around stories in their own feeds or in those that are centrally managed by the NewsGator Enterprise Server.

For more information about Social Sites Ideas and Social Sites 2.7, visit http://www.newsgator.com/business/socialsites/default.aspx.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Filtrbox Makes Companies More Competitive with NewsGator Data Services

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:05:10 GMT

Filtrbox information service will use NewsGator’s metadata on 50 million Internet user actions every month

DENVER, April 28, 2009 – Filtrbox has turned to NewsGator to boost the quality of the proactive market intelligence it provides to sales forces, executives, marketers and investors.

Every day, Filtrbox scours millions of online sources, both mainstream and new media, and delivers qualified business intelligence tailored for each client. As a result, organizations make better decisions based on breaking news, trends and competitive happenings.

Filtrbox’s sources include newspapers, blogs, Twitter, Google and a myriad of others. NewsGator Data Services now provides Filtrbox with a wealth of RSS content, including blogs and the metadata revealing each item’s popularity and usefulness. This metadata is used by Filtrbox’s proprietary FiltrRank™ content scoring.

“We analyze massive amounts of information to ensure the relevance and value of content we deliver,” said Ari Newman, Filtrbox founder and president. “NewsGator has just added attention metadata to the mix, so we can now use that to further boost the information used by FiltrRank™ to rate articles.”

NewsGator operates the world’s largest repository of free Internet content. This repository is the result of NewsGator’s pioneering RSS reading/delivery services. The company adds 9 million new articles to the repository every day, indexing and aggregating 4.6 million feeds and archiving four years of historical content. Millions of people interact with NewsGator products each day, generating more than 50 million relevance events each month.

“Businesspeople rely on Filtrbox for intelligence that can change the course of a negotiation, sale, customer experience or multimillion-dollar investment,” said Walker Fenton, general manager of NewsGator’s Media and Consumer division. “NewsGator Data Services’ unique insight into how audiences are responding to content helps Filtrbox clients get more value out of this intelligence information every time.”

Filtrbox offers proactive market intelligence in two versions, Basic and G2. For more information and a free trial, visit: http://www.filtrbox.com/signup.html.

For more information on NewsGator Data Services, visit: http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/dataservices.aspx.

About Filtrbox
Filtrbox, Inc. delivers proactive market intelligence to business professionals every day by persistently searching all kinds of online media. The company uses its proprietary FiltrRank™ article scoring system to filter out the noise and deliver relevant, timely intelligence to sales teams, executives, marketers and investors. Filtrbox is used by hundreds of businesses around the world as a competitive advantage in the fight for better information and news alerts. Instead of reading the same publications and hoping to come across the information one needs, Filtrbox lets customers identify the specific information they are interested in, and the system does the rest. Filtrbox searches millions of sources, qualifies results, removes duplication and delivers a ranked result set every day. Filtrbox is delivered as an on-demand web service and is available under monthly or annual subscriptions. For more information, please visit www.filtrbox.com.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Want to Cut Costs? Try Enterprise Social Computing.

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:49:51 GMT

NewsGator white paper details seven surprising ways
social computing saves money in any economy

DENVER, April 23, 2009 – Enterprise social computing makes sense even in a down market given the hard cost reductions associated with even a modest investment, says NewsGator.

“Despite, or even because of, the current economic difficulties, enterprise companies should see innovative social computing solutions as ever more important,” NewsGator, the social computing company, asserts in a new white paper released today.

NewsGator’s first-hand experience working with Fortune 500 executives on Enterprise 2.0 projects has revealed seven ways, many far from obvious, to more than recoup the cost of a social computing initiative. They include reducing the costs of email storage, content, printing, enterprise software, travel, employee on-boarding and enterprise application integration.

1. Reducing email volume.
By connecting individuals to relevant people, information and community workspaces, social computing reduces the need to send messages and attached files as email. Email storage costs $500 per GB per year, and one Fortune 100 manufacturing company calculated that a simple 2 percent reduction in email volume could save $2.6 million per year. Social computing is a good way to accomplish that.

2. Reducing premium content costs.
Enterprise social computing is built on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a technology for subscribing to the vast wealth of free online content. Though free, some companies are still paying dearly for the content through premium publication database services. One company NewsGator works with recently analyzed 500 randomly chosen articles it had paid for and discovered that as much as 90 percent of the content was free online. In addition to efficiently aggregating free content, social computing extracts more value from the content through social bookmarking, tagging and other efficient sharing activities.

3. Lower printing budgets.
Well-designed social computing solutions put important content on or near employees’ start pages, eliminating the need to visit disparate legacy systems and print information for review. Social computing also eases online sharing, editing, and reviewing of documents, further reducing the temptation to print, copy and distribute. One company NewsGator works with calculated that social computing could cut its printing and toner budgets by two-thirds.

4. Reducing expensive seats of enterprise software.
Seats of business intelligence, CRM, HR and innovation management software can be expensive. For a fraction of the cost, social computing solutions can execute the same functions with an even broader base of constituents. The result is better solutions faster for less money.

5. Trimming travel budgets.
Sixty percent of businesses are trying to cut travel expenses. Organizations are discovering that networking relevant people through appropriate channels and media is a very good substitute for face-to-face meetings, meaning deep savings in travel spending without productivity loss. Open, enhanced virtual communication across functions and locations also enhances a sense of job security and well-being so that employees remain productive despite economic stress.

6. Increasing talent management ROI.
Social computing attracts smart workers. Seventy-seven (77) percent of millennials use social networking sites, and 91 percent say that “newer, innovative technologies in the workplace would make them more likely to consider a potential job opportunity.” (Source: Millennials in Insurance Survey, KRC Research, April 2008). Social computing also reduces the cost of on-boarding new hires, providing them with rich content, connections and collaboration from day one.

7. Reducing enterprise application integration costs.
Social computing platforms can significantly reduce the need to assign employees to manage integrations between legacy systems and newer business applications. Through RSS and XML, social computing can cost-effectively deliver information, alerts and events to workstations or mobile devices – with the savings more than covering the cost of the social computing implementation.

For more information, including other social computing benefits, download the white paper “Delivering ROI with Enterprise Social Computing.”

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com Unveil New Syndication Offerings for Publishers

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:30:33 GMT

Portable widgets and ‘related topics’ provide valuable and trusted content to enhance engagement and readership

DENVER, April 21, 2009 — Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com today introduced syndicated content offerings for online news publishers’ Web sites. Discovery Channel has launched a portable widget to fill a growing need on the Web for credible science and technology news. HowStuffWorks.com has debuted a “Related Topics” feature, which links to contextual content behind the daily news headlines. Both products are powered by NewsGator’s Syndication Service.

Discovery Channel’s Science and Technology News Widget
From cutting-edge medicine and renewable energy to nanotechnology and flying cars, Discovery Channel’s portable widget features science and technology news from its award-winning Discovery News service. Since 1998, Discovery News has produced breaking news and in-depth coverage and analysis of technology and space-related news, as well as developments in earth sciences like meteorology, geology and ecology. With credible and compelling science and technology content updated daily, the new portable widget provides publishers such as online news organizations with a turnkey solution to bolster science and technology coverage and engage online audiences.

“With our high-quality engaging content, Discovery Channel has always been a trusted source for people online who want to explore the rapidly advancing world of science and technology,” said Iain Langridge, vice president, operations, digital media, Discovery Communications. “Using NewsGator’s service, we provide publishers a way to deepen their consumer experience with original science and technology news from a credible brand in an easy-to-distribute-and-digest package.”

HowStuffWorks.com’s Related Topics Links
HowStuffWorks.com, the Web site famous for demystifying the world, is on a similar mission to better inform visitors while supporting publishers. HowStuffWorks.com’s new “Related Topics” offering allows visitors of a participating newspaper’s or content partner’s site to follow related topic links next to a story they are reading and discover articles that illuminate the original story.

“People want to know more about the world around them. The news tells readers what happened, HowStuffWorks.com explains why and how,” said Jason Hoch, vice president, product development, HowStuffWorks.com. “From the ways in which a tornado forms to the science behind multiple births, the new ‘Related Topics’ modules offer readers more in-depth information on the latest headlines allowing them to learn more and further satisfy their curiosity.”

“Succeeding on the Web means putting your content where your consumers want it, when they want it, and NewsGator’s Syndication Service does that by making it easy to share content with other sites in ways that benefit both the publisher and the audience alike,” said Walker Fenton, general manager of NewsGator’s media and data services division. “Our offerings bring tremendous value to publishers by giving them greater access to high-quality content from trustworthy and recognizable brands like Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com.”

The new Discovery Channel and HowStuffWorks.com offerings seamlessly integrate into a publisher’s Web site – augmenting the publisher’s existing content with relevant partner information that increases page views and ad revenue, improving search engine optimization and increasing lift. The offerings are available to qualified media companies, and there are no maintenance or resource requirements.

For information, visit http://dsc.discovery.com/widgets/newsgator/signup-page.html and http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/hsw/.

About Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel (DSC) is dedicated to creating the highest quality non-fiction content that informs and entertains its consumers about the world in all its wonder, diversity and amazement. The network, which reaches 98.1 million viewers in the US, can be seen in over 170 countries, offering a signature mix of compelling, high-end production values and vivid cinematography across genres including, science and technology, exploration, adventure, history and in-depth, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the people, places and organizations that shape and share our world. For more information, please visit www.discovery.com.

About HowStuffWorks.com
HowStuffWorks.com (http://www.howstuffworks.com) is an online source of credible, unbiased and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works. The site has won hundreds of awards since its inception, including multiple Webby Awards, Time Magazine’s “25 Web Sites We Can’t Live Without” and PC Magazine’s “Top 100 Web Sites.” In December 2007, HowStuffWorks.com was acquired by Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISAD, DISBD, DISCK) and became part of Discovery’s digital media strategy. Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., HowStuffWorks.com was a subsidiary of The Convex Group, a media and technology company, from 2003 to 2007.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Juliet Farrell
Discovery Communications
240-662-1707
juliet_farrell(at)discovery(dot)com
www.Discovery.com

Now Available on Your Web Site: Public Radio International

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:22:10 GMT

PRI taps NewsGator to syndicate content through freely available widgets

DENVER, Mar 18, 2009 – Since listeners increasingly find their radio online, Public Radio International is making its gold-standard programming available across the Internet through “widgets.” The dedicated Web-based portable apps serve up audio and headlines and can be replicated and shared indefinitely.

PRI produces and distributes programs such as “The World,” “The Takeaway” and “This American Life,” and distributes news services like the BBC World Service and Capitol News Connection. The Minneapolis-based network provides more than 400 hours of audio content each week. This content is heard by 12 million listeners on over 800 public radio stations and online via streaming, podcasts and on-demand. Available now at www.pri.org/pri-widgets, the widgets feature an in-page audio player, as well as headlines of PRI stories so listeners can freely embed them on Web sites, blogs, social networks and personalized Web pages. Individuals who subsequently find these newly embedded widgets can “grab” them and perpetuate the free viral distribution.

The widgets are powered by NewsGator, the social computing company, which enables syndication, tracks usage volume, and lets PRI editors customize the widgets’ look, feel and behavior. The widgets help PRI capitalize on the radio listeners’ growing interest in the Internet: radio-related Web sites saw a 30 percent jump in visitors last year, up to more than 65 million, according to comScore.

Three PRI widgets feature audio and headlines of PRI stories focusing on timely news topics:

Economic Security
This widget focuses on the economic factors affecting American workers, such as mounting layoffs, home foreclosures, healthcare costs and personal debt.

Global Health and Development
This widget focuses on health and sustainability in developing countries – like the diabetes epidemic in China, or how the current credit crisis is affecting the micro-loans that are so critical to businesses in the developing world.

Social Entrepreneurship
This widget focuses on people and organizations pioneering solutions to help the disadvantaged – like technology that provides clean water to slum communities in Africa, or green jobs for inner-city youth.

“We want to be where our audience is, reach new audiences, and give everyone the option of listening to the PRI content they want on-demand,” said Cory Zanin, PRI’s executive vice president of operations and strategy. “This new distribution method helps us fulfill our mission of serving audiences with distinctive content that provides information, insights and cultural experiences essential to understanding a diverse, interdependent world.”

Other media organizations can co-brand the PRI widgets with their own logo upon request to PRI. Headlines link back to the approved co-brander’s site, increasing page views, time spent on site and brand visibility. There are no set-up, hosting or licensing fees for co-branders. Visit NewsGator’s Web site to co-brand the PRI widgets.

PRI chose NewsGator because of the flexibility, manageability, and analytics power of its platform and the guidance consultants provided, according to PRI’s Zanin. USA Today, Reuters, National Geographic, CBS News, Media General, Discovery Channel and Cablevision are among other media companies using NewsGator Widget Services to syndicate their content.

“PRI is the epitome of quality programming and an exemplar of how premier content producers are expanding audience and consumer choice at the same time,” said Walker Fenton, general manager of NewsGator’s media and consumer division. “Media today is as much about reaching out to listeners where they are as attracting them to your station or site, and that’s what NewsGator Widget Services help accomplish for our customers.”

To try NewsGator Syndication services, visit: http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/signup.aspx. To see a gallery of NewsGator powered widgets, visit: http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/gallery.aspx.

About PRI
Founded in 1983, Public Radio International leads media by producing, acquiring and distributing innovative content that enables U.S. audiences to “hear a different voice,” bringing new voices, global journalism and cultural perspectives to the American public. Through partnerships with BBC World Service and station-based and independent producers, the Minneapolis-based media leader provides more than 400 hours of content each week broadcasted to more than 30 million listeners* through 800 public radio stations and available through podcasts, streaming and on-demand through its Web site, PRI.ORG. PRI’s content is heard by over 12 million people each week through these collective sources.
*SOURCE: Arbitron Nationwide/Act 1 Systems, Persons 12+ in DMA, Mon-Sun 24 hours.

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises and media companies leverage social computing solutions to deliver real business value. The company’s enterprise social networking and widget services are in use by hundreds of the world’s most recognized brands, including Biogen Idec, CBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and USA Today. NewsGator Social Sites and Enterprise Server give enterprises better ways to collaborate, share content, expand employee knowledge and improve productivity. NewsGator Widget Services enable media and brand companies to better engage their audiences and extend the value of their brands through viral syndication of content. NewsGator also offers free, award-winning RSS aggregators for the Web, desktop, mobile devices and e-mail clients. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Contact Information

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com

Dan Jensen
Public Radio International
612-330-9212
djensen(at)pri(dot)org
www.pri.org

University of Michigan Executive Education Program Helps Businesses Harness Social Computing

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:16:27 GMT

U-M benefits from collaboration with NewsGator with real-world examples, technology insights, and ROI research

ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 10, 2009 — Social computing is making inroads into business, and decision makers who want to get ahead of the competition are tackling enterprise-wide projects that harness the information and connections of their employees.

The University of Michigan School of Information Executive Education program, in collaboration with social computing company NewsGator, is offering “Making Social Computing Work in Your Enterprise,” a course for the business community. The course offers a conceptual framework for understanding Enterprise 2.0 in terms of business objectives rather than technology features. The course also explores economic, social, and psychological principles that can help Enterprise 2.0 rollouts succeed.

“Online communities, social networking, and user-contributed content dominate the consumer world, and businesses yearn to capture the power of these new models to improve performance,” said Professor Paul Resnick, coordinator of the university’s social computing specialization. “Unfortunately, an organization can’t simply copy and paste consumer social computing tools into the enterprise and hope employees make good use of them. This course will help managers and executives choose the right technical features, according to their business needs, and plan the social interventions that will motivate employees to participate.”

Dean Martha E. Pollack added that the School of Information is home to some of the leading thinkers in social computing. “We are excited about the opportunity to bring their expertise to the corporate world,” she said. “This new course will provide managers and others responsible for bringing social computing to their enterprise with the insights and tools they need to ensure success.”

The June 1-3, 2009 course will address three central questions:

Which technology features are most useful for meeting business goals?
Which organizational and social interventions should accompany a technology rollout to ensure productivity gains?
Which metrics should be used to predict the value of a proposed Enterprise 2.0 project, and to manage the project on an ongoing basis?

The School of Information is collaborating with NewsGator because of NewsGator’s experience helping hundreds of enterprises implement social computing solutions and measure the benefits. NewsGator will provide case studies, best practices, ROI tools, and other research materials.

“The ‘Making Social Computing Work in Your Enterprise’ course will immerse managers, executives, and sales and service consultants in the University of Michigan’s rich pool of social computing knowledge,” said NewsGator CEO J.B. Holston. “Professors and graduate students live, think, breathe, and shape the science of social computing, and course attendees will go back to work enlightened and empowered by the university’s knowledge.”

To register for the course, please visit the University of Michigan School of Information Executive Education Web site.

About the University of Michigan School of Information
The School of Information (si.umich.edu/executive) is internationally recognized as a leader in educating information professionals and in conducting research into the fundamental role of information and information technology in society. Faculty explore the many ways in which information is created, collected, managed, preserved, accessed, and presented, applying multi-disciplinary perspectives to discover new knowledge about the interplay between people, information and technology. The work of SI faculty can be found in numerous Web 2.0 applications, such as ratings systems and recommender systems. The School is the premier institution studying and using technology to improve how people work together in virtual collaborations. SI researchers continue to be instrumental in raising awareness of the importance of cyberinfrastructure as a national asset and have helped elevate it to priority status at the National Science Foundation.

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises and media companies leverage social computing solutions to deliver real business value. The company’s enterprise social networking and widget services are in use by hundreds of the world’s most recognized brands, including Biogen Idec, CBS, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and USA Today. NewsGator Social Sites and Enterprise Server give enterprises better ways to collaborate, share content, expand employee knowledge and improve productivity. NewsGator Widget Services enable media and brand companies to better engage their audiences and extend the value of their brands through viral syndication of content. NewsGator also offers free, award-winning RSS aggregators for the Web, desktop, mobile devices and e-mail clients. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Contact Information

Jay Jackson
School of Information
734-763-0074
jacksonj(at)umich(dot)edu
www.si.umich.edu

Laura Farrelly
NewsGator
303-552-2046
lauraf(at)newsgator(dot)com
www.newsgator.com

Ed Marshall
Beaupre
603-559-5816
emarshall(at)beaupre(dot)com
www.beaupre.com