Social Fish has put considerable effort into producing an informative whitepaper entitled "Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis." They took the time to interview the CEOs from six companies that are active in this space and provide some feature comparisons. They look at:
- Connecting People (profiles, connections, groups, alerts)
- Putting People to Work (blogs, forums,polls, wikis)
- Enabling Face-to-Face Events (live events, registration, calendars)
- Satisfying the I%ers (mobile, tagging, RSS, ratings, integrating with sites like Facebook)
- Details for the Techies (APIs, AMS integration, security)
- Behind-the-Scenes Marketing Tools (SEO, metrics, advertising)
- Working Together (deployment, pricing, support)
I encourage anyone interested in social media solutions to download this paper and keep it as a handy reference. But I would also caution that this is a very incomplete list of vendors and solutions. Missing are open source options, CMS platforms that provide rich social media features, and vendors such as Ironworks that have successfully deployed a variety of technology platforms in support of diverse social media objectives for both corporations and associations. Be sure to ask lots of your own questions and check references carefully before partnering with any vendor on such an important project.
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