Clearspace X fosters customer relationships through online communities

November 1, 2008 nnyq.com edit

Successful organizations typically share one important trait: they listen to customers. In the Web 2.0 era, perhaps the best way to embrace -- and extend -- this concept is through online communities. Jive Software has taken its Clearspace collaboration product (which glues together blogs, wiki, document management, and discussion forums) and endowed it with new features specifically for building these public-facing communities.

[ See also: InfoWorld Technology of the Year Awards Application and Middleware winners ]

The external edition, Clearspace X, is an easily administered J2EE application or hosted service that lets you quickly create communities; in turn, each is structured by understandable topics. For example, a financial institution could have communities for banking, loans, mutual funds, and retirement. Each community would contain specific blogs, wikis, and forms. I found this scheme far better for quickly finding relevant information than having it spread throughout one large site. Clearspace X also has content ratings, a reward system, question and answer, polls, and announcements -- all of which help members stay engaged while hopefully forming a positive opinion of your organization.


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