Jive will IPO for USD 100 mill

Jive is supposed to be Facebook for businesses (I know it doesn’t say much, but hang on a little longer). Jive has been loosing money for 5 years in a row. Jive has just filed the papers for an IPO to raise USD 100 million.

Does this make sense?

The issues Jive is addressing are all mission critical:

1. How can we make finding information easier?
2.  How can we make finding competencies easier and faster?
3. How can we make finding experience easier and faster?
4. How can we make finding interest easier and faster?
5. How can we make communicating easier and faster?

The world of top down structural approaches applied in ERP, CRM, HR, Intranet, CMS and other systems have brought us a step on the way.  But I think we all know that they really don’t do the job. When we need to move fast and find solutions to new challenges traditional informations systems are more of a hurdle than a help.

Imagine that you are confronted with an issue, maybe a challenge, could even be a problem. How do you find the resources in your organization, business and private network, which could help you, solve it?  I think most of us are in this situation every day.

In the world of communication and information the issue seems to be that 1% is creating, 4% is commenting and 95% is observing. That’s the way it is (my own statistics based on my guts feeling!).

Social media seems to release a lot of energy, make commenters write and make observers comment and even write.   It also seems to make people read and reflect (at least sometimes). Social Media consumes an awful lot of time and energy from the participants.  How can we use this phenomenon to create genuine business value?

This is what Jive is working at doing.

If it makes sense to assign 400.000 people for 10 years with the objective of putting a man on the moon, than I also think it is worth while giving Jive USD 100 million to make a go at the business potential of social media.

It is a just cause. I’ll chip in a few dollars.  Not to become a millionaire, but to be a part of a just cause.

Go for it Jive – we need to tap the energy of the “beast” making the world a better place. “Rubbing the right lamp does release massive energy.”