Visto 6.0, the latest version of the company's push email technology, will feature Visto Social Networking, a client application that allows messaging, news feeds, and media sharing. The client, a "living address book," looks similar to an instant messaging buddy list. By clicking on a "buddy," the mobile user can view updates on each of his connections via any number from popular social networking sites: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and many more.
Within this same client, the user can click to call, email, IM or otherwise contact his social networking
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connections.
"What we're doing is unleashing the potential of mobile social networking," said Matt Park, Visto's director of product management. "It's one view of all networks, and all the user needs to contact someone is one click. In typical social networking on a mobile device, most people are opening a WAP browser. If I want to call that contact, I have to back out of the browser, remember the phone number and manually plug that into a dialer on the phone. It's a completely disconnected experience. It needs to be a one-click experience."
Visto Social Networking will use the same push technology that Visto's email product uses in order to push social networking updates and messages to users' mobile devices.
Park said that companies are recognizing the value of providing their mobile employees access to mobile social networking, particularly LinkedIn and Facebook, which can be valuable for connecting with business contacts.
According to Park, however, the sweet spot for this product is likely to be the "prosumer." "These people are interested in accessing corporate information, but they're also self-choosers," he said. "They buy their devices, and they want access to corporate and personal information on one device."
"I do think social networking has great potential in the enterprise," said Craig Matthias, principal of Farpoint Group. "The concept is sound. I think it could very well replace email in many cases in a few years. Everything you do with social networking tools is applicable to work. It's not just for fun."
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Having a single place to access multiple online identities and email accounts on a mobile device will simplify the user experience for mobile workers, according to Sean Ryan, research analyst with IDC. He said there is some danger, however, in that users might get too much information and too many updates, to the point where they might need to shut off the device for a little peace and quiet.
Ryan said Visto's social networking application will appeal to small and medium-sized businesses. He guessed that companies with fewer than 100 mobile employees would be the sweet spot.
"For those companies, this could be a good solution," he said. "People can run it automatically and not have to maintain and manage it themselves. The carrier can do the handholding. For large enterprises, I really see them sticking with the types of solutions they're deploying right now. They are typically wary of doing hosted types of offerings. They want control of management and security."
As it has always done with its products, Visto is selling this technology through wireless network carriers. Park said the company plans to roll out the new product later this year with a North American carrier that has not yet been publicly identified. Visto is also planning to sell the product directly to consumers but has not announced when that will happen. Matthias said he took issue with Visto's selling directly to carriers. Carriers tend to be conservative and take a long time to get anything done, he said, adding that Visto should sell the product to third parties that could turn around and sell it directly to enterprises.
Let us know what you think about the story; email: Shamus McGillicuddy, News Editor