IBM Adapts Social Networking App For Mobile Devices

IBM is making its Connections social networking application available for Apple, Android and BlackBerry smartphones and tablet computers, the company said Monday. IBM also debuted a number of tools that IT administrators can use to manage corporate and personal data on mobile devices.

Connections is IBM’s answer to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and applications like Salesforce.com’s Chatter. It includes the Profiles social networking service, user communities, a wiki system, a blogging service, file-sharing capabilities, an Internet forum and other services.

Eighty-six percent of business workers currently use social media to help them make business decisions, IBM said.

IBM is now offering versions of Connections that run on the Apple iOS, BlackBerry and Android operating environments. The mobile software, which links with the server Connections app, is available as a free download from Apple, BlackBerry and Google Android app stores.

More employees are using their personal mobile devices for work and securing data on those devices is becoming a burden for IT managers, IBM noted.

The company’s new, “Partial wipe for Apple iOS devices” provides a way for IT administrators to delete company data from an employee’s iPhone or iPad while preserving the device owner’s personal data and applications.

IBM also is expanding the capabilities of its Sametime IM and unified communication application for Android and BlackBerry devices. Sametime on Android now offers text-to-speech for reading incoming messages, the ability to send photos through Sametime chats, and the ability to automatically update location status. On BlackBerry devices users can now participate in online meetings through Sametime.

A new Lotus Notes Traveler “click-to-call” capability, currently in beta, allows IBM e-mail users to call people listed in the Android OS device calendar with a single click. And a version of LotusLive Meetings for Android-based devices is planned for later this year, IBM said.

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Social networking overall surges, but Google+ could be slumping

Over half of all online adults in the US now use at least one form of social network, new research suggests, the first time all age segments have crossed the fifty-percent milestone. 65-percent of users have a Facebook or LinkedIn account, or one with another social networking site, the Pew Research Center claims, with young women (18-29) described as “power users” with 89-percent surveyed using the sites, and 69-percent doing so daily. However, the statistics come as one of the poster children for fast-growing social networking, Google+, seemingly experiences a slump in user interest.

That slump, DreamGrow Social Media suggests, has seen Google+ go from 2.89-percent of all visits to Google at the start of August, to 1.84-percent today. Total traffic looks to have dropped by more than a quarter in the most recent two week period.

It’s worth noting that Pew’s figures are based on a 2,277 person sample, while DreamGrow’s analysis uses Alexa traffic stats. The latter relies on internet surfers who have the Alexa toolbar installed, and the numbers could be affected if Google’s other properties – such as Gmail or search – experience a surge in popularity that reduces the comparative impact of Google+ visits.

Official figures for Google+ adoption are still in short supply. Back in mid-July, Google itself said it had 10m registered users, while comScore suggested site traffic indicated 25m users (either registered or viewing public posts). Since then, however, Google has been quiet about service popularity, preferring instead to roll out tools for blocking and ignoring content as well as integrating Hangout support into YouTube.

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