Oh Google, why did you stop being sexy?

[Image by Exey Panteleev]

Born out of a tweet from Tom Raftery, who pointed me to Google's Terms of Services concerning their latest love child: Google Drive

I waved at Google Wave, Buzz didn't thrill me other than enabling the opt-out in Google Mail, and I jumped onto Google+ as soon as I could but the effort I put into it (and the goodies I got from it) went downhill fairly soon after.
I skipped Google Drive. I have a fully mirrored NAS meaning I don't care if a disk breaks, I can access it from anywhere in the world and the fast-moving docs I have on my laptop and phone as well, as I have to be able to work offline anywhere, for any duration

So, I didn't read their Terms of Service - but someone else did, and it looks awful

Apples and oranges: Socialcast and tibbr

The other day one of my commenters asked:

What's the difference between Socialcast and tibbr?

I had a rough idea but not much of a clue, and decided to do a quick one. I commented back but there has been some considerable dustblowing going on, so I'll repeat that here and elaborate on it

Free Chatter: all your data are belong to us?

A pun on an Internet meme that I first saw as a hack to World of Warcraft, this is the first thing that crossed my mind when I read the Terms of Service (TOS) of the now free Chatter, released January 31st

First, I briefly used Chatter and it looks like an old version of Yammer. Access via one single email domain, and People, Groups, Files: been there done that. Maybe I should play around a bit more but I'm being a bit careful - after reading this post, you'll understand why

I have a few posts on Chatter, but suffices to say the price per user was aimed at $50 a month before and during development, and lowered to $15 at introduction. A little while later, Chatter became free for existing salesforce.com users, and now it's free for everyone in the world.
Clever move, desperate move, anything in between? I can only guesstimate the motive(s)

A few quotes from the TOS:

"Your Data" means all electronic data or information submitted by You to the Chatter.com Service.

That doesn't leave out anything, agreed? ALL you submit, is referred to by "Your Data"

Enterprise microblogging: measuring true value "is relative"

Yammer announced a new feature yesterday: Leaderboards

Leaderboards gives users access to statistics about their network activity. The Leaderboards include:

• Most Liked Members: Top 10 users whose messages have received the most ‘Likes’
• Most Replied to Members: Top 10 users whose messages have received the most replies
• Members with the Most Posts: Top 10 users with the most public messages posted
• Most Replied to Threads: Top 10 threads with the most replies
• Threads with the Most Participants: Top ten threads with the most participants

I applaud the introduction of stats as they give insight in general behaviour and performance of enterprise microblogging users - but I think Yammer is missing an opportunity to add real value here

Enterprise microblogging should be pay-per-use

An article by Dennis Howlett about Socialtext and Yammer yesterday caught my attention

In essence SocialText announces that they'll sell their product at 80% of Yammer's price (being very brief here) but I think they're both wrong