• Founded in 2004• 140 Employees• Dallas and London offices• August 2008 Intel Capital $20M

Public facing social software Intranet social software

Social Analytics Simple Content Publishing

Telligent Products

Key CustomersMany of the world’s largest brands trust Telligent

What is Enterprise 2.0?Consumer use drives corporate adoption

• How do I find information faster?• How do I share what I know?• How do I find experts to help me?

People want to collaborate and share

Two common types of social solutions:1. Digital Marketing2. Enterprise 2.0

For small and medium businesses:1. Faster customer communication2. Market Research (know thy customer)

Why do Global Brands Invest?

Trends• Traditional PR has changed• Measurement & ROI is now critical• Technology becomes more connected• Further empower the knowledge worker

• Generation Y will transform the workplace

When you grow up with a technology it is a utility

“Email is what my parents do”

Biggest Challenges• Not all technology… culture change

• Change management within organizations

• Lack of industry standards and APIs

• Issues with Personal Identifiable Information

• Tools need to evolve further and faster

Biggest Challenges• Identity management needs to standardize

(OpenID)• Consistent experience across devices

• More measurement required, not less

• Distributed (cloud) computing requires very different skills

Opportunities• “Real Time” collaboration like Google Docs

• Microformats supported everywhere • Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook become utilities • Recommendations based on persona• Smarter ways to manage all data• Innovative analytics and measurement• OpenSocial, OpenID, Video, Chat, what else?

Myths & TruthsPerceptions

• Microsoft platform cannot scale

Truths• Microsoft tools can lead to bad habits

Reality• MySpace.com runs on Microsoft .NET• MySpace.com uses Community Server

Why Microsoft’s PlatformPlatform expertise

• Focused strategy• ASP.NET and SQL Server

Very aggressive roadmap• Tools and technologies enable us to out innovate• Credit Microsoft dev tools with our aggressive roadmap

Hits & Misses• SQL Server and .NET proven to a be a big win• SilverLight or Flash (jury is still out)• Mobile was a miss

Platform ArchitecturesSimple

• Single server web & database together• No load balancing

Simple Cluster + Virtual Application Tiers• Multiple web servers on load balancer• Single database with failover

Read/Write Cluster + Distributed Application Tiers• Multiple web servers on load balancers• Multiple database servers

Performance ManagementDedicated performance team

• 3 Fulltime developers

Specialize in• Caching and database (SQL & Oracle)

Web Application Stress Tool• Automated as part of development process

10 Keys to Succeed with a Community Strategy

1. Measure

• Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users

• 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case

2. Listen before you act

• Communities do not form spontaneously• Don’t fall for “Build it and they will come”

3. Welcome New Members

4. Let People be the Brand

• Microsoft witnessed a dramatic jump in developer satisfaction scores

5. Who runs your community?

You will need a “Community Manager”“It is like herding cats… sometimes”

6. Content is KingWhat will you give, not what you get

• Focus on adding value• Be patient

Suggestions• Announcement on blog• Files and email integration

7. Stay the course. Invest.Success can be very expensiveConsider options to monetize

8. Encourage Adoption

9. Pixels vs. Pennies

10. Close the loopUltimate feedback groupMake sure you act!

The New Focus Group: Online Networks

“They [communities] are often cheaper and more effective than phone surveys or traditional focus groups because companies can draw on the participants in a much broader and deeper way than they could in an offline setting.”

Key Takeaways• Midst of a collaboration transformation• The younger generations will drive this• We need to build better tools and APIs• Applications should be built to share data• Successful communities listen • Measure everything

Thank you!Rob Howard

• rhoward@telligent.com• Blog: grokable.com• twitter.com/robhoward