Aurea had assured Jive customers they were committed to the "Jive-n" internal community product, but many licensees were skeptical. In the end, Aurea jettisoned Jive-x instead. So what gives?

Just last week we updated our Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software research and advised customers - "Jive is at a crossroads; as an enterprise buyer, understand that there are more likely changes afoot for the vendor itself."

In this edition we now include a full-blown evaluation of Facebook Workplace against our strict criteria.

The popularity of Slack, particularly on the user engagement front (it may not really be ready for large enterprise use) — a group chat tool developed with a mobile-first design ethos — underscores that mobile collaboration in the digital workplace remains an unmet need. Traditional collaboration vendors have lagged here but are scrambling to catch-up.

RSG survey research finds that enterprises are still in the very early stages of mobile-enabling their applications.

Both the tech press and the mainstream publications gush over this tool as if it were the next best thing since sliced bread, but Slack is unproven for enterprise use.

As a potential customer, understand that Google is signaling serious intent but that they are still in the early stages of that journey. Even for the mighty Google ambition does not automatically guarantee success

Think of one of the great tennis rivalries of our time. Federer vs. Nadal. At the French Open, you'd bet on Nadal. But at the Wimbledon..

Updated reviews of Google, Igloo, Jive, Liferay Social Office, Verint/Telligent, and Traction — with new entrants to the report: eXo and Interact. Here's a sneak peek of some of the findings

HubSpot recently witnessed a bizarre drama: the Chief Marketing Officer was terminated, its VP of Content resigned, and the co-founder CEO was sanctioned by the board for violating the company’s code of conduct

A performance plateau calls into question this major collaboration and social software player's path-to-profitability and therefore its future viability as an independent company

Many of these vendors and products have come to a crossroads. Repeat the mantra after me - caveat emptor.

Here are some reflections on these two vendors.

Enterprise Social software vendor Jive announced two tuck-in acquisitions -- start ups Producteev and Meetings.io

Recently, Jive software announced the release of Jive Gamification, an add-on to its enterprise social networking platform. Jive is OEMing the module from a vendor called Bunchball that specializes in gamification software. Jive's version and is an extension of "Nitro," Bunchball's software platform for such things