The topic of social software (or social networking) and its relationship with unified communications is becoming a hot topic. Whether it’s a public service like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, or a secure enterprise service like IBM Lotus Connections, the use of social software is skyrocketing, and its potential for changing the way in which we communicate and collaborate is tremendous. Enterprises have begun to embrace some of these services, and companies like Cisco, Nortel, and Dell all use Twitter, for example, to both provide updates to customers and to monitor and to see what people are “tweeting” about them. A quick search on LinkedIn shows groups from most of the leading UC enterprises.

Some companies discourage their employees from using public social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook for fear that these services are too distracting and there is little or no security. These companies are turning to enterprise-class services that provide the security needed while meeting business goals (e.g.; networking with peers within the organization, finding an expert within the company, collaborating on projects, etc.), but there are currently a limited number of these enterprise services available today. IBM Lotus has certainly taken the lead with products like Bluehouse and Quickr, but other companies are getting into the game as well. SAP’s ‘ESME’ (Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment), which is similar to Twitter but runs behind the firewall on top of Netweaver, is one example, but other vendors will be following suit. Based on some of the demos I’ve seen at conferences, we should be seeing some innovative services within the next two years.

Where does UC fit in with social software? There is certainly a need for UC tools to be integrated with some of the public software services, and we’re already seeing some integration with the enterprise services.

Public social services like Twitter are great for certain things like finding out which of the people you “follow” are at the same conference as you, or to get up-to-the-minute notification and information on what’s going on. Just as Barak Obama used text messaging as a way to notify people who his running mate would be, he could have also used Twitter. However, these services are limited in various ways, particularly in the enterprise environment, and integration with some UC tools would be very useful. For example, I may see something important in a colleague’s “tweet” and want to contact them in real time via a phone call and be able to conference in other people to discuss the issue. While Twitter doesn’t provide this capability, there are add-on applications from third parties, such as Phweet that are used to create ad hoc conference calls between groups of Twitter users (Phweet lets you accept calls with one click from your Twitter page or Twitter clients). This is certainly one example of social software integrated with UC capabilities. It’s only a matter of time until this type of capability can be used with other social software services as well. Also, I would also expect Tweets and updates from Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to show up in users’ unified messaging inboxes, enabling them to send a reply via various communication modes.

And what about integration with business processes, you may ask. We’re starting to see early examples of this. LenderFlex in Atlanta, Georgia is using Twitter to deliver risk based mortgage pricing to mortgage loan professionals and real estate agents, who can get information when and where they need it by simply twittering a few codes.

There are several ways in which social software and unified communications can be used together, including tying in presence capabilities, click to call, click to conference, mobility, and other capabilities to make it easier to connect with people in your organization who have the expertise and knowledge you need to tap into at the time seems to be the basic and first step.

Also, notifications and alerts on community topics is another valuable way in which CEBP functions are packaged into simple applications such as Twitter. Many communication enabled business process (CEBP) applications rely on immediate notification of events to the appropriate people, and Twitter could be a fast and easy way to do this. This is already happening – one example is the Los Angeles Fire Department, which used Twitter during the October 2007 California wildfires.

Sharing information in a community, or as the basis for community, is another use for social networking, though the lines blur between the social aspects and the project-centric collaboration tools. Some of IBM’s social software capabilities are already being extended to its UC offerings - IBM is integrating Sametime with Connections and Quickr, so that a user’s profile card from Connections can be made available across the platform, letting users tap into someone’s shared files and be able to connect with them through Sametime. Community membership lists can be used in Quickr and Sametime, making it easier to contact and reach someone in the community.

Very shortly, UCStrategies.com will have a new social software community that you can join and we’ll welcome your feedback.