Present.ly - Another Twitter for Companies, This Time Done Right

Today at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York developer of a range of Ruby on Rails enterprise tools Intridea is announcing launch of its own Twitter for the enterprise - Present.ly. Last week we discussed Yammer winning top prize at the TechCrunch 50 conference a lot and it is now obvious that enterprise Twitter versions are a hot topic because everyone is trying to figure out if there is really a market for corporate microblogging. Intridea seems to be determined that the market actually exists and with the quality of their application I myself am inclined to admit that this approach may very well find its market.

The basic functionality of Present.ly is quite familiar to anyone using Twitter and other microblogging services - users post updates and follow them via web interface, email, instant messengers, phone or other mobile devices. But unlike multiple Twitter clones Present.ly does not simply repeat all the same basic functionality for an enterprise environment with a few tweaks. Instead, Present.ly goes further and adds functionality that can actually add value for an enterprise customer, like groups, media sharing, and customization. Groups definitely make sense for large companies where different employees work on different projects while media and documents sharing (with built-in virus scanning functionality) will help employees easier share files instead of constantly emailing them around the office computers. And with the feature set of Present.ly I think it’s not even necessary to mention such obvious things as threaded replies to updates.  Present.ly even allows to categorize updates as urgent or as questions (and add visual marks to help users easier notice them in the general stream) so that they could be properly addressed.

When a company signs up for an account with Present.ly, it is assigned a sub-domain where it can build a network of as many employees as it chooses. The version for up to 5 users (without media sharing and SMS or IM support) is free for companies while versions for larger companies are paid for in the range from $14 per month for 15 users to $99 per month for 100 users with the possibility of adding further users for $1 each. There are some customizable deployable versions that are available on demand for large corporations should they choose to adopt such a solution.

There are a few major things that make Present.ly quite a reasonable solution for Twitter-like corporate communications. First of all, it is impossible for just about any employee of a company to start a network with the company’s email - the network is started by the IT specialist in charge and all the employees join the network by invitation. This is a more secure approach, obviously, and the company can not be blackmailed into paying for the ability to administer the network its employees use for communications (unlike Yammer that bases its business model on such an approach of spontaneous creation of a corporate network based on corporate emails). Besides, this invitation-based approach to joining a corporate network means that Present.ly can be used to involve customers in the process by inviting them to participate in discussions related to them and track progress if that is necessary.

API offered by Present.ly also allows for a business to actually integrate it as a communication platform into the already existing business process and workflow instead of adding extra load for employees to use yet another application. Using the API Present.ly network and its content can be integrated in a company’s calendar solution or a corporate wiki, for example.

My own impression after playing with Present.ly for a few hours is that it is definitely a very nice application that has chances of gaining traction with enterprise customers due to its robustness, very rich feature set and user friendliness. Where I also see potential for Present.ly is in any communications that require instant private updates among members of various groups so I don’t think that it will necessarily be limited to enterprise customers only.

Here is the video tour to Present.ly that will hopefully help you understand why I am so optimistic about it:

Present.ly Introduction from Intridea on Vimeo