Social Computing Software for Mobile Devices: A Q &A Session with Walker Fenton

With mobile phones becoming smarter, more powerful, and pretty much ubiquitous, people increasingly expect to do more of their business on them. That includes social computing. So we asked our in-house mobile computing expert, Walker Fenton, to catch us up on the state of the art.

Q. Does enterprise social computing play well on a mobile device?

Walker: Yes, and that’s precisely why we are so excited about our NewsGator Social Sites mobile clients – because enterprise social networking (like consumer social networking) is a fantastic experience on the device. In fact, 40% of traffic on Twitter comes from mobile devices, and 350 million of Facebook's 800 million users are accessing Facebook from a mobile device. We see lots of people interacting socially with their mobile phones, and we think they can collaborate with their colleagues within their companies via mobile devices just as well.

Q. What can Social Sites users do today on a mobile device?

Walker: Just about everything that matters:

• Keep up with what their colleagues are saying and doing via the activity stream
• Quickly add their own updates (like tweeting internally)
• Ask and answer questions, submit ideas
• Access online communities
• Share photos, “Like” or comment on colleagues’ updates
• Have immediate access to colleagues email & phone numbers
• Receive all the same notifications that desktop users do.

Q. What mobile operating systems does Social Sites support? What others are we considering?

Walker: Currently we support:

• Apple iOS Devices: Version 4.1 and above.
• Android 2.1 and above.
• RIM Blackberry: Version 4.5 and above. Devices supported include Bold, Curve, Pearl, and Tour models.

NewsGator aggressively updates its support of mobile clients and devices, and there are more coming. Our Windows Phone 7 client will be available soon.

Q. How important is mobile to your customer base? And if important, how will it factor into your product development plans?

Walker: Long term, mobile is as important as desktop and browser access. When we surveyed our clients earlier this year, “investing in mobile” was the second highest priority for Social Sites development. So we are continuously evolving our mobile clients to keep pace with the constant innovation of our server product.

Beyond that, we think some really interesting use cases specific to the mobile experience are emerging. So we are closely studying how people collaborate on their mobile devices to ensure whatever features are included in mobile apps solve immediate problems for our clients.  

Q. How are you addressing potential security concerns around mobile?

Walker: Companies typically have questions around network access and security of data on the mobile device.  When they look closely at this, most companies find that the standards they have developed for email access on mobile devices apply equally well to our Social Sites clients.

Q. Are there any use cases where the Social Sites mobile client is actually superior to the desktop experience?

Walker: Every mobile device has a camera and certainly boots up faster than your laptop ever will. So in the event you need to share a picture or quickly respond to a colleague or reach out via the phone, Social Sites on your mobile makes it much easier to accomplish those tasks than the desktop. Mobile makes it very easy to take a picture or a video, which can come in very handy if you are trying to explain a problem or accurately capture specifics around a question. Going forward, one of my favorite ideas has to do with including your location (only when you want to!) within a status update, which is definitely something you can't do at your desk. Note: We are looking into adding a location-based feature in Social Sites 2010 in the future.

Q. Where do tablets fit into the equation?

Walker: Tablets are beautiful devices, and we think that larger screens and more real estate on the iPad will consequently encourage people to engage more in Social Sites generally. Among our customers, we see several centrally-driven projects to distribute tablets – typically to executives and/or sales people.  Ultimately, we are convinced that we all will soon be spending more time on our phones and tablets and less time in front of a computer. So yes, tablets are very important in our future.

Q. I’m sure everyone wants to know what mobile device you use and why?
 
Walker: My phone is an iPhone. I also have an iPad and a MacBook Pro laptop. We (NewsGator) also test on BlackBerry and Android, so what I'm using on a day-to-day basis depends on which apps need feedback.