Leverage Software Announces Enhanced Tools for Enterprise Social Networking with Latest Release Of Online Community Platform

August 13, 2007; 02:31 AM
Leverage Software, a leading provider of enterprise social networking and online community solutions, today announced the 5.8 version of its community-building platform. The new release provides end-users with a variety of new features for networking, communicating and collaboration within the enterprise as well as greater control over information used within online communities.

"Enterprises are under more pressure than ever to maintain clear communications with a broad range of stakeholders," said Mike Walsh, CEO and founder of Leverage Software. "Businesses are putting social networking tools to work to create direct connections and collaboration opportunities with customers, partners, investors, employees and others who contribute to the success of the business. The new features we have added to the Leverage Community Platform will enhance the ability for a business to maintain value-added communications with their key constituencies while providing greater control over how information is accessed, shared and displayed."

New features in this release include:

Social Tagging and Tag Clouds
Leverage Software now offers customers the ability to mark or 'tag' items of interest to help other community members find relevant information quickly. This enhancement enables members to create a constantly updated and evolving knowledge base or 'index' of topics of interest to the community. Social tags allow individuals to tag groups, discussions, and files for sharing with the rest of their community.

Meeting and Scheduling Enhancements
Leverage Software has also improved the meeting request workflow. Meeting recipients may add response messages when accepting or declining a meeting. With this enhancement, members can personalize meeting notices with photos and click-through to a meeting page that lists responses and updates about the meeting.

Private Content, Public Content, and Search Engine Optimization
Community owners may now decide, on a feature-by-feature level, which content is visible by an anonymous browser prior to logging into the community. Creating a system which is fully private allows individuals to create an exclusive community, while a more public community may help drive interest and adoption, as well as contribute to search engine optimization (SEO.) Further controls are offered to enable a public/private hybrid community and to enable greater control at the user level.

Scheduled Chats and Chat Improvements
Chat rooms have been improved to allow an administrator to specify a scheduled date for their chats, as well as to provide a description and an image around each chat room for more personalization. Community members may now view upcoming chats and archived transcripts of previous chats.

Group and Group Discussion Enhancements
Several enhancements have been made to the group and group discussion features. Community members can edit existing posts, more discussions are visible per page, and administrators can remove existing group photos for moderation purposes.

These newly released features expand Leverage Software's already robust social-networking and community platform which is powering the communities of more than 170 companies across the technology, media, and consumer industries. For more information about the new features, download the version 5.8 release notes at Leverage Software Labs.

About Leverage Software
With innovative enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management solutions, Leverage Software provides companies and organizations with scalable services to host and foster employee, customer, and partner communities where members can meet, build relationships, contribute content, and share ideas while giving companies a way to boost revenue and glean valuable insight to increase customer and employee satisfaction.

Leverage Software can be found powering the online communities and social networks for over 170 companies including Microsoft, Sun, HP, Salesforce.com, Charles Schwab, McKesson, Nielsen Media, InfoWorld, and The New York Times. For more information, visit www.leveragesoftware.com.