• Social Software technology categories range from Platform offerings (from the likes of IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google), to Standalone Suites (from Jive, Traction, Awareness, and others), to numerous viable pure-play Blog and Wiki tools, as well as Public Networks (like Facebook) and
White-label Community Services (like Ning, Pluck, and Lithium).

• Enterprise customers show increasing interest in extending internal social tools outside the firewall (and vice-versa), but vendors are struggling to support both environments -- which have substantially different functional, performance, and security profiles -- off the same toolset.

• Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM all actively promote their Social Software products, but each arrived comparatively late on the landscape, and each still relies on heavierweight portal services for key functionality.

• Some vendors offer exceptions to the rule in certain areas. To name a few: wiki vendor Atlassian provides comparatively strong security and access control; hosted community vendor Awareness has good multi-site management; social bookmarking appliance Connectbeam ships with highly functional back-up and restoration services.