90p Admin

The more I think about it the more I want to move to Google+. Fire away... Mobile on Socialcast sucks (no can connect multiple accounts, notifications are terrible, chat is a separate app, snails pace development) The future here is mobile - I really don't see Socialcast info until I login. With G+ I'd see everything. G+ has built in hangout and chat that are always going to be better than SC or Yammer Downside: G+ does NOT filter posts with new activity/replies to the top of the stream. They just sit wherever they've floated down too (though people get notifications of new activity). And no dealing with salespeople from SC or Yammer (or other social networks that charge) on products that they really want to market to the fortune 100 and dealing with us (150 people) is more of an annoyance. For $50 per year we could get evertyone a Google Apps account and share documents, etc (more likely we'd only do this with 90 Minds fellows -- ie first.last@90minds.com). This would include Google Drive with copies of the files we all use for upgrades.

Yes, but does Googe+ have the functionality we depend on in Socialcast in terms of creating essentially a private group (all of us) and then sub groups for people who have interest in subtopics. All areas that are walled off from the public.

And can we control who are allowed to be members and kick them out if they are no longer members

And if somebody accidentally clicks one 'circle' too many will their posts go out to everybody else in their circles or even be public?

Personally, I get way too many mobile notifications. With my advanced email app on Android, all relevent Socialcast posts go nicely into a folder, all background synced. I don't bother with the app and really find it clumsy to do most interaction with any of these sights in a meaningful way until I'm front of a big screen and keyboard

Within G+ you'd have to create communities to separate different discussions (Sage100, Sage300, etc). People need to be added separately to those communities. Because it's in a community the posting is private - you're not using circles. You can also remove people easily. I don't have anything for people who enjoy posting into SC via email or cataloging and referencing all emails within Outlook. G+ doesn't have a solution for that and likely never will. And I have the opposite problem - I could not get an email for every new post in every topic. It would drive me batty and I search through Socialcast (more typically I use Evernote to pull out important topics and catalog them). I've been very vocal about not being impressed by Socialcast and I continue to be unimpressed. While I'd like to think another Enterprise Social would be the solution I'm not so sure. I think they're all aiming for the Fortune 100 who can foot a monthly $120k subscription bill and our little group is forever going to fall through the cracks. G+ is absolutely not a perfect fit. The fact that it does not sort topics by last post/activity is a major flaw imho. The fact you can't use email replies to G+ posts is a problem. However -- it's free, it has kick ass integration to Hangouts, it has a constantly improved upon mobile app. And with Google it's not as if we're pushing some pie-in-the-sky SaaS offering onto members where they have to load and get used to an app only to find that it's discontinued (Insert Google Wave comparison here).... As a largely volunteer group we need to seize upon easy to manage and integrate applications to the largest extent. I think doubling down on Google Apps and Google+ is something that we should really think about. Yeah there are a lot of missing features -- and yes we have money to spend on an enterprise social. But given the choice would spending that money perhaps on Google Ads or some similar group effort be a better member benefit? I don't know the answer but I think we should be thinking about this. To my knowledge Socialcast has not gotten their act together enough to even bill us. By the time we get the rep to send a final bill we might be another year in arrears (sounds like Sage... ) ....

I'm not necessarily opposed to it but I don't see many upsides. And @MarkChinsky has the same questions I have about potential downsides. I find G+ to be very confusing with the Circles and I'm always concerned about posting inappropriately to the wrong Circle.

This is our present 90 Minds community. Yes the circles are difficult to grasp. We'd be using communities which automatically segregates all posts into one area without the use of circles. https://plus.google.com/communities/107446381475354309228

We have a bunch of groups within Socialcast but realistically i think we only need a tiny percentage: a. Sage 100 b. Sage 300 c. Business of Consulting d. Technology (general) One other issue with G+ is that you can't control your notifications by sub-category. As I see more and more of these ""wing and a prayer"" apps and services start to go under - I worry it's only a matter of time before Socialcast does and if they don't we're small potatoes and it's a pain to deal with their pricing and sales, etc.

We can consolidate a lot of the groups within socialcast. I'd add a general chatter group to your list Wayne.

I actually loathe the G+ interface. Socialcast has a lot of issues and frequent wonkiness...Like Diane's issue with the two threads not showing up in one stream. I don't think Socialcast is going away any time soon since vmware seems to be using it internally, but the outward facing functionality or focus could change significantly. I've been playing with Yammer again recently. I like a lot about it. There are still a lot of cons like you can't edit posts. It plays really well if you are in different communities though. You can also have multiple external facing networks, so you could have some vendor groups pretty easily.

I echo Robert's thoughts on the G+ interface. I don't know why but it almost seems like they intentionally make things more difficult and non-intuitive. Yammer gets a plus in my book. The real question to me: why are we even considering this? It seems like a distraction for now. I would hope that we would be given an end of life notice on SC if and when the time comes.

Because the mobile interface of Socialcast is terrible, it's not getting better, it's designed for the fortune 100,

And how long before Microsoft f's up Yammer or kills it like they did Placeware and a million other companies

I thought we had moved on also. Yes, the interface could be improved, but I really don't hear a lot of complaints from the regular membership.

I think the issue is like ERP. We are not yet in, as my partner puts it, 'excruciating pain' so there is not going to be much momentum in changing platforms yet

I think the Socialcast interface is descent on apple. Sounds like the android interface is not wonderful. Although I think a new one is due out soon

So ... have we all agreed to stay with Socialcast for the time being?

Maybe we will get a bill for it. It has been free for 2 years now.

I say we stay with it and bring this up for discussion when they finally get around to billing us

I am with @PeterWolf on this one. Only a few members of the SC group could be classified as early adopters (e.g. Wayne). The vast majority of users are in the middle somewhere. The droid mobile app works enough for me when I need to use. Quite honestly, I am on a workstation most of the time. I have only read a few posts recently asking (lamenting?) about the SC interface. It works well enough. If you really want to move on, then post a survey asking the membership as a whole. I am not going to make a decision based on just the admin groups input. Perhaps we can bring it up in February.

When you say you are ""with @PeterWolf"" do you mean with like with-with or just with?

I agree with Peter that we stay with social cast.

Just checking. I know Peter gets a little touchy feely sometimes.

Tell me about it. I've learned not to be too close in front of him.....