Newsgator has acquired Tomoye, a social networking platform for Sharepoint. The acqusition makes Newagator one of the largest enterprise collaboration companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space and positions it as a vendor with the deepest ties to the Sharepoint environment.

Details of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition buoys Newsgator's reputation as an enterprise collaboration provider, almost exclusively for the Sharepoint platform.

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Newsgator says it now has 2.1 million paying users, which it claims makes its the largest social computing vendor. It's a claim we are a bit skeptical about as there are so many possible ways to define exactly what it means to be a social computing vendor.

Newsgator has always had deep ties with Microsoft. it began as a news aggregator that embedded into Outlook. In recent years, Newsgator has transformed into a collaboration provider. its focus is on Sharepoint. Microsoft seems to look kindly on Newsgator as a partner. In contrast, companies like Jive, that integrate with Sharepoint, are seen more as competitors.

The acquisition appears to give Newsgator deeper social networking capabilities but perhaps more so gives it a position in the Governmnet 2.0 world.

Tomoye was founded in 2000. Its most significant installation is with the U.S. Army, where it has 150,000 users. Customers include the Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Air Force and th/> [...]

Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:00 pm

Posterous, the integrated small blogging platform, announced the debut of one-stop custom domain registration today.

A new "domain purchasing feature" provides a one-click on-site way to avoid what Posterous' Vincent Chu called "the geeky details" of securing and applying a personal domain to your account.

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"After you've purchased your own domain, we also make it super easy to set up your own personalized email boxes, calendars, and wikis using Google Apps."

Instead of mucking about in the guts of your personal branding engine, this push-button domain machine avers to do it all for you. A big deal? Just a deal of modest proportion, in keeping with the simplicity the service emphasizes.

Tumblr, Posterous' biggest competitor, also offers custom domains but not through its own site and not integrated with Google.

Toy maker Mattel said today it is set to roll out a new product in the fall called "Puppy Tweets" that will allow dogs to send tweets to their own Twitter account.

Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that attaches to a dog collar and connects to a USB receiver in a computer. The pet owner creates a Twitter account for the dog and then can receive tweets on a smartphone or desktop.

The tag features a number of pre-recorded tweets that are activated by a dog's activities. If the dog is running around a tweet might read, "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and OOUUCHH!" Everyone knows that if dogs could tweet that's how they would sound.

If the dog is resting it will tweet "Somedays it feels like my paw is permanently on the snooze button!" If the dog is barking it will tweet "Yahoooooo! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on."

"Puppy Tweets capitalizes on two popular trends - the use of social media and real time communication, as well as peoples' extreme love for their dogs," said Susan Russo, Mattel's director of marketing.

Puppy Tweets will be available at retailers in the fall for $29.99. No word yet if there will be a similar product for cats or if Puppy Tweets can alert dog owners if their pet is having an accident on the carpet.

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Sat Jan 23, 2010 00:10 am

It’s that time of year again and the ClickZ Online Marketing Summit will arrive shortly to the Minneapple, Friday June 25th. The conference organizer has generously donated a free pass to the 1 day workshop for us to give away here on Online Marketing Blog.

The agenda covers everything from Social to SEO to B2B Blogging to Email Marketing. You’ll be able to learn from a mix of client side marketers and agency subject matter experts on cutting edge strategies for more successful online marketing programs.

Companies presenting include HubSpot, Cargill, Exact Target and many others. I’ll be giving the opening keynote presentation on SEO and the Social Web:

Core to many search marketing strategies is “Fish where the fish are” and the fish are decidedly hanging out on Google. YouTube, Gmail, Blogger.com and other online services from Google make its presence ubiquitous in the online marketing world. Now imagine if your website disappeared from Google tomorrow. What would that do to your marketing, your business? Google and search engines present a tremendous opportunity to attract new business, but it’s important to diversify online marketing in a way that also benefits overall search marketing. For many companies, a relationship with customers is worth a lot more than a click, pageview or inbound link.

In this presentation you’ll learn the value of diversification from the development of channels of distribution for optimized social content that is independent of, yet complimentary to search engines. Social SEO enables companies to realize search engine marketing benefits as well as long /> [...]

Wed Jun 23, 2010 03:50 am

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