Greta Roberts, CEO, Talent Analytics, Corp.
8 February 2012

LinkedIn’s decision to acquire Rapportive has implications far beyond the Social Media community.  Their focus on making enterprise software (gmail) more personal, raises the bar from “technical communication” to “human collaboration”.  They see the value in taking advantage of human content to help business users quickly collaborate and connect.

To stay competitive and differentiate, enterprise software vendors need to find increasingly interesting (and useful) ways to incorporate human content in their software applications. Traditional technical features and functions aren’t enough anymore.  Not just Social Media software mind you, but Talent Management software, ERP systems, Enterprise Social Media, CRM vendors, everyone.

I think we can call it a trend when 3 major software vendors (in only the past 3 months) make strategic acquisitions that roll human content into their core software.

• SAP acquires SuccessFactors
• Salesforce acquires Rypple
• LinkedIn acquires Rapportive

With the acquisition of Rapportive, LinkedIn puts its money where its mouth is, giving 15 million votes in favor of embedding human content inside of enterprise software.  If content is king, human content delivers “the keys to the kingdom”.

We believe this is a great trend.  Focus beyond technical connection to human content that helps work get done. Will be fun to watch. Is even more fun being right in the middle of this exciting initiative.

Greta Roberts is the CEO of Talent Analytics, Corp. She can be reached via greta@talentanalytics.com or @gretaroberts.