“Amid a string of privacy snarls this spring by Facebook, Google, AT&T and others, and the phenomenal adoption of online social networks not just by the most computer-savvy but by the rest of society, privacy advocates say it is time to set out a basic set of common principles that consumers could expect social websites to honor.”

The Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy has taken up a “bill of rights” for social-network users. The Bill includes the following items and the full article can be read here.

Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.
Clarity: Ensure that policies and terms of service are easy to understand.
Empowerment: Support privacy-enhancing and assistive technologies.
Security: Treat my data as securely as your own, and notify me if it is compromised.
Control: Let me control my data, and don’t share it with others unless I agree first.

These are the cornerstones of our corporate social networking solution. Creating a secure, private, branded employee social network where your former employees can stay connected to your company and each other sends a powerful message about the value you place on your company’s people. This delivers real value back to your business.

We are passionate about these values and they permeate everything we do from product planning to UI design to how we engage in supporting clients and community members. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution enables employees to securely share knowledge, develop closer connections, and drive significant business impact.

Ever since Facebook revealed Facebook Open Graph, a platform for personalizing the web browsing experience on third-party websites, the world’s largest social network has been at the center of the privacy debate. Even getting scrutiny from the senate, Senator Charles Schumer of New York wrote a letter to the FTC, urging them to create privacy guidelines for Facebook and other social networking sites. Compromised user privacy is a serious concern in today’s internet world. The web itself is designed to share information and the core issue, identity authentication, is one that we have done a tremendous amount of work around at Conenza.

Identity authentication is critical to creating trusted online communities. Over the last decade, as Conenza has built and managed online communities for Global 2000 enterprises who need to carefully manage their brands, we have seen how identity-authentication is essential to vibrant, value-creating communities.

Secure member authentication is a baseline requirement for a private corporate talent community. The level of trust influences freedom of information sharing. In most online communities or corporate social networks, when there is a mixture of people, such as personal and business acquaintances, the level of trust will vary across the community.

Privacy settings and permissions controls can help create an environment of trust in an online community. Understanding how people connect and share in different environments helps us determine the granularity of privacy settings and the depth of permissions-controls we offer to our clients and community members in our corporate social networking platform. The safer community members feel about sharing information, the higher the level of trust and ultimately engagement will be.

Building that foundation of trust is the cornerstone of our communities and our corporate social networking solution.

Event Archive: The Application of Enterprise Social Networking to Talent Acquisition and Management
Speaker: Katherine James Schuitemaker , Chief Marketing Officer , Conenza, Inc.

Every day global organizations are adopting social networking technologies to increase collaboration and improve organizational efficiencies. These collective workforce communities can enable large companies to tap into the knowledge and connections of current and former employees to drive significant business impact. Successful implementations report enhanced collaboration and communication, increased recruiting and talent management efficiency, and retained access of valuable intellectual capital.

How can talent acquisition leaders leverage this and apply to talent management and recruitment efforts? We will walk through the different types of communities that are being adopted within the enterprise, and the impact they can have on talent management programs.

To view this webinar or for more information on Conenza’s corporate social networking solution or getting started with the Conenza Community Core, please visit http://conenza.com.

The Conenza Community Platform integrates the best of social networking functionality to give your company a vibrant online community that drives engagement and interaction with the site. Conenza’s corporate social networking solution provides your company with the technology and resources it needs to deliver a highly rewarding employee and alumni community with minimal impact on your internal resources.

Connections
Your employees and alumni will be able to create networks of trusted personal and professional connections that enable enhanced dialogue and active tracking of people and topics of interest. Connections also drive increased frequency of use—drawing members back to the site to accept invitations to connect with their colleagues, learn what’s new, and stay to explore what’s been added to the site. Connections also serve a powerful role in contributing to the viral growth of your community.

Groups
Your company, employees, and alumni members can gather, compare notes, post resources, and collaborate around shared interests via Groups. Groups can be set up to be open or private, visible or hidden. Groups facilitate deeper connections within the community and create new ways for members to interact, engage, and create value together.

Messaging
Conenza’s social networking platform features an embedded internal messaging system and the ability for members to opt to have messages sent to their personal email address.

Document and Rich Media Sharing
Your company, employees, and alumni can share documents, photos, and video files enhancing the depth of information exchange and collaboration within the community.

Discover additional features of Conenza’s corporate social networking platform and learn how Conenza’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution is the product of more than a decade of experience building and managing the corporate communities of Global 2000 enterprises such as Microsoft. For more information please visit our site at http://www.conenza.com

Conenza’s corporate social networking software, deeply experienced insight and comprehensive consulting services enable you to foster meaningful relationships with your corporate alumni to fully realize the business value they represent.

When alumni can make valuable career and business connections, collaborate and exchange ideas with their peers, find out about exciting events, and enjoy privileged discounts and benefits on things that matter, you can count on them to be enthusiastic champions and brand advocates for your organization. Conenza has more than a decade of hands-on expertise in what it takes to engage and grow alumni communities with a combination of world-class technology and unique benefits and services.

The Conenza Community Platform provides a compelling member experience that keeps your alumni coming back to the site to:

* Make and renew trusted, personal and professional connections with former colleagues and friends

* Uncover hidden career and business development opportunities

* Connect, collaborate and innovate with peers on topics of shared interest

* Contribute to a community effort to create positive change in the world through corporate and collective philanthropy

* Take advantage of cost-effective individual and small business insurances, benefits and services, as well as other privileged-access perks

If you are looking to accelerate the successful launch of a new corporate alumni community, Conenza offers expert professional services to support every phase of the community lifecycle.

For more information please visit our site at http://conenza.com.

In today’s challenging economic environment, companies are looking for ways to increase efficiency and cut costs. A corporate alumni and employee social network can enable companies to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with exiting, retiring, and former employees, and provide a compelling source of competitive advantage for global organizations in strategic outplacement, recruiting/re-recruiting, retained access to domain expertise, business development, and high-value marketing.

“The business case for a private alumni and employee community in normal economic times is one that is extremely compelling; in an economic downturn it becomes a strategic imperative. The Conenza Community Core provides corporations with a simple and affordable way to maintain valuable connections with their people, past and present, in a branded, secure environment,” said Tony Audino, Conenza CEO. “For more than a decade, our technology and support services have enabled some of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies, like Microsoft, to build and grow vibrant online communities that deliver real benefits to the members and positively impact both the top and bottom line.”

The Conenza Community Core 3.0 includes:

* Community Building Blocks: The Conenza Community Core includes the quintessential building blocks of a community: secure member registration and authentication, directories, profiles, news, and administration and reporting.
* Social Computing Features: The Conenza Community Core includes social computing features such as groups, connections, messaging, wikis, blogs, activity feeds, and document sharing.
* Strategic Support Services: Conenza’s Software-as-a-Service solution licensing fee includes expert consulting services to help clients develop their community strategy, provide day-to-day support, and quickly realize the full financial benefits of their initiatives.
* Customization to Meet Business and Brand Requirements: The Conenza Community Core is configurable to comply with corporate brand standards and features content moderation and permissioning capabilities to meet the robust needs of various audiences inside and outside the enterprise.
* Modular Upgrades: Value-enhancing modules can be easily added to the Conenza Community Core to improve the effectiveness of critical human resources, sales and marketing initiatives, and increase the business value derived from a private, branded alumni and employee community. Add-on modules include the Opportunity Center, Events, and Marketplaces.

For more information on Conenza’s corporate social networking solution or getting started with the Conenza Community Core, visit http://conenza.com.

The impact of social media cannot be denied. The 2009 word of the year was “tweet,” and the word of the decade was “google,” according to the American Dialect Society. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube–which are defined by their user-generated content–have wiggled their way into most people’s working hours, and thus onto many workplace computers.

One of the biggest issues caused by social media during an employee tenure is the simple theft of working time. There are also matters of privacy, nondisclosure, taboo topics and hostile work environment, brand protection, and many more. The good news is, this is the stage when you have the most control over the situation. Most organizations would benefit from a well-researched, clear, and fairly applied social media policy.

Another huge issue is recommendations. Increasingly, people are asking former colleagues to write them recommendations on social media such as LinkedIn. Is that the same as an official post-employment recommendation? Jackson says yes–although it’s difficult to define when people are speaking for themselves, and when they are speaking on behalf of the organization. It’s a good reason to have a solid policy in place.

The warmest and fuzziest scenario is positive relations through social media in the form of corporate alumni networks. In Computer World’s article, “The new word for tech’s ex-employees is ‘alum’” large, successful sites catering to groups of ex-employees are examined. Microsoft’s alumni network, for example, has 10,000 members–what an incredible opportunity for networking and goodwill!

Conenza sees the value in alumni social networks and provides corporate strategic planning and social networking community software. Read the full article here.

For more information please visit our site at http://conenza.com

Conenza has just announced a new pilot program for Global 2000 companies looking to cost-effectively and quickly prove the business value of a corporate social network.

With an enterprise-class corporate social networking platform and expert community support, Conenza’s “Quick-Start” Program makes it easy to get up and running with a pilot for a selected group or division with minimal impact on an organization’s internal resources.

What’s Included:
* A private, branded, hosted social network powered by the Conenza Community Core, including: Directories, Profiles, Connections, Groups, Blogs, News, Document and Photo-Sharing, and Basic Reporting
* Conenza’s expert support services to help you quickly drive value for those in the pilot
* Access to community best practices that make getting started easy

And, Conenza will work with its clients each step of the way to ensure the pilot’s success.

LAUNCH A PILOT PROGRAM TODAY!
No implementation cost. $500 per month. Register by April 30, 2009 to participate.

Find out more!

By Meighan Berberich, Director of MarCom, Conenza

We had some very exciting news at Conenza this week. Gartner recently published the “Cool Vendors in Social Software, 2009” (1) report and Conenza was one of the four vendors featured.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

You can check out today’s press announcement here.  

(1)  Gartner, Inc. “Cool Vendors in Social Software, 2009” by Jeffrey Mann, Carol Rozwell, Nikos Drakos, Thomas Otter, March 13, 2009

By Meighan Berberich, Director of MarCom, Conenza

Today, we announced the launch of the Conenza Community Core 3.0.

The Conenza Community Core, the foundational building block of Conenza’s modular enterprise social software solution, provides global companies with an easy and cost-effective way to get started and quickly create value from a privately-branded online alumni and employee community.

The Conenza Community Core 3.0 includes:

Community Building Blocks: The Conenza Community Core includes the quintessential building blocks of a community: secure member registration and authentication, directories, profiles, news, and administration and reporting.

Social Computing Features: The Conenza Community Core includes social computing features such as groups, connections, messaging, wikis, blogs, activity feeds, and document sharing.

Strategic Support Services: Conenza’s Software-as-a-Service solution licensing fee includes expert consulting services to help clients develop their community strategy, provide day-to-day support, and quickly realize the full financial benefits of their initiatives.

Customization to Meet Business and Brand Requirements: The Conenza Community Core is configurable to comply with corporate brand standards and features content moderation and permissioning capabilities to meet the robust needs of various audiences inside and outside the enterprise.

Modular Upgrades: Value-enhancing modules can be easily added to the Conenza Community Core to improve the effectiveness of critical human resources, sales and marketing initiatives, and increase the business value derived from a private, branded employee and alumni community. Add-on modules include the Opportunity Center, Events, and Marketplaces.

You can check out the complete announcement here.