Workers Demanding Employers Deploy Enterprise Social Networks

FORT LEE, N.J., Jan. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Inflation Association has been closely following the current trend of workers at corporations across America demanding that their employers implement enterprise social networks for them to use in the workplace. Traditionally up until now, co-workers have communicated with each other at work through emails and instant messages. However, just like how Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have revolutionized the way consumers communicate with their friends and families, enterprise social networks are now revolutionizing how co-workers get their work done and collaborate together on projects.

Facebook originally became popular among college students and was at first available exclusively to college students. Recent college graduates experienced first hand the consumer social networking boom and realize more than anybody else how social networking has improved the lives of millions of Americans and made it a lot easier for them to keep in touch with their loved ones. These college graduates who took part in Facebook's explosive growth are now entering the work force and demanding that their employers implement social networking technology in the workplace.

The days of co-workers using emails and instant messages are coming to an end. Employees are now demanding that their employers enter the 21st century with enterprise social networking technology. Soon, every major corporation will be using enterprise social networks. The enterprise social networking space is projected to grow 61% annually from $600 million last year to become a $6.4 billion market by year 2016.

When eBay employees demanded that eBay setup an enterprise social network and management initially refused, they decided to setup their own free Yammer network. Yammer is a private start-up company that allows any employee of a business to quickly and easily setup a free enterprise social network for that business. While Yammer is very popular and successful, its features and functions are very limited compared to fully featured enterprise social networks that are rapidly being adopted by major corporations today.

When management of a company finds out that their employees are using Yammer, they have the ability to pay a fee to takeover the Yammer network being used by their employees while also upgrading that network to include many additional features. When eBay management found out that their employees were using Yammer, they considered upgrading to the corporate version but realized that even Yammer's upgraded version lacks many of the features and functions that the top-tier fully featured enterprise social networking platforms offer today. eBay decided to deploy their own official enterprise social network using NewsGator, which is an add-on to Microsoft SharePoint.

There is another free enterprise social network available for employees to setup on their own called Chatter, which is a part of Salesforce.com, a large $15.6 billion publicly traded company. Just like Yammer, Chatter is lacking many of the important features that make enterprise social networks so useful in helping co-workers work more closely and efficiently together. Chatter also doesn't offer a suitable fully featured version for companies to upgrade to.

NIA has discovered a small company with a free enterprise social network that we believe is superior to both Yammer and Chatter. The company is BroadVision Inc., a publicly traded company with a market cap of only $150 million. BroadVision's free enterprise social network is called Clearvale Express. Clearvale Express is the only free social network for businesses that has a micro activity stream that creates a Twitter-like experience for communicating in and outside the firewall. In our opinion, when users of Yammer and Chatter find out about Clearvale Express, they are likely to switch over to using Clearvale Express.

The great part about Clearvale Express is that unlike Salesforce.com and Yammer, BroadVision has developed a top-tier fully featured enterprise social network for businesses called Clearvale Enterprise. NIA considers Clearvale Enterprise to be one of the leading fully featured enterprise social networks in the industry along with the enterprise social platform of Jive Software. When management of a company sees that their employees are having huge success with Clearvale Express, businesses can seamlessly upgrade to the fully featured Clearvale Enterprise. BroadVision offers a unique pricing model where companies pay based on traffic instead of users. NIA considers this to be the most attractive pricing model available to businesses today because they only pay for users who are actively using their Clearvale enabled network, while most pricing models in this industry are based on the number of users regardless of how active they are.

As of January 24th, BroadVision is the #1 largest percentage gainer of 2012 out of all U.S. stocks trading above $3 per share. Softbank, a $30 billion Japanese telecommunications conglomerate, had so much success using Clearvale within their corporation that they are now offering Clearvale Express and Clearvale Enterprise to their own partners through BroadVision's Clearvale Passport partner program, which allows companies to resell BroadVision's Clearvale enterprise social networking solutions. Despite BroadVision's large share price gains in 2012, its market cap is still only a fraction of the current market cap of Jive Software, which just went public in a very hot IPO last month. Both BroadVision and Jive Software stand to benefit greatly in the upcoming months from the strong likelihood of rapidly surging investor interest in this space as we approach Facebook's IPO, which is reportedly set to take place in May.

To learn more about all public social network stocks as well as private social network companies that could go public in 2012, NIA is currently offering its 2012 Social Network Stocks report by going to: http://inflation.us/social2012.html

About NIA:

The National Inflation Association is an organization that is dedicated to preparing Americans for hyperinflation. NIA offers free membership at http://www.inflation.us and provides its members with articles about the U.S. economy and inflation, daily news stories and blog updates, and important charts not shown by the mainstream media. NIA is the producer of economic documentaries that have received a combined 17 million views including the critically acclaimed 'Meltup,' 'The Dollar Bubble,' 'End of Liberty,' 'Hyperinflation Nation,' and brand new 'College Conspiracy.' NIA provides unbiased reviews of the major online sellers of gold and silver bullion and also offers profiles of gold, silver, agriculture, oil, and alternative energy companies that could prosper in an inflationary environment. NIA is the creator of 'NIAnswers,' the world's most comprehensive database of questions and answers about inflation, currencies, debt, and precious metals.

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NIA owns 188,700 shares of BroadVision that it purchased at an average price of $11.77 per share. NIA agreed to a 60 day holding period on its initial position of 122,000 shares at the time of its original December 12th, 2011, profile of the company but intends to sell its shares at some point in the future after the date of February 12th, 2012. NIA intends to sell its additional 66,700 shares of BroadVision in the future and can sell them at any time. NIA's co-founders have also been referred business in the past from somebody who has filed as a large BroadVision shareholder. NIA also reserves the right to accumulate additional shares of BroadVision at any time. NIA's report is intended for informational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. Neither NIA nor its co-founders are investment advisors or broker/dealers. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. NIA's stock suggestions are not a solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any security. Never make investment decisions based on anything NIA says. Do not rely on information from NIA to make investment decisions. Only use the information contained in NIA's report as a starting point for you to conduct your own research and make your own investment decisions. NIA does not guarantee the accuracy of information in its report. Stock market investing is extremely risky. NIA's co-founders may have previously discussed some companies in other media outlets.

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SOURCE National Inflation Association