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NewsGator has released Social Sites 2.7, the latest version of the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007-based enterprise social computing product, designed to connect people with colleagues and content in topic-based communities.

NewsGator calls the new version Social Sites Ideas, which allows employees to offer new ideas for consideration throughout the entire organization. The company explains that colleagues can "vote up" an idea they like, invoking the wisdom of the crowd and add detailed comments. Employees are notified of relevant new ideas, votes and comments. The best ideas are promoted to management for final review and implementation.

NewsGator claims Social Sites Ideas is the only innovation management solution fully integrated into an enterprise social computing environment. It further explains innovation is an organic part of the social computing workflow, not a siloed application, with noteworthy actions reported in activity streams.

The company claims that by using Social Sites Ideas, employees can view or search proposed innovations within individual communities or across them all, and can filter by an idea's popularity or status. Managers can blog about the progression of ideas through the discussion and implementation phases, and user profiles include a history of ideas that the user has proposed. Organizations can create private communities, or "campaigns," for confidential idea cultivation in closed groups. Any community can further collaborate on new ideas in dedicated wikis.

Other new features in Social Sites 2.7 include:

• activity stream e-mail digest,
• new Web Parts,
• new community features, and
• a simple, powerful RSS reader.