Social Networking Vendor Pays It Forward to the Unemployed

Socialtext, a Palo-Alto based vendor that builds social networking software for enterprises to use in-house, wants to do its part to pay some good will forward at recession time. The company has begun offering all its products for free to laid-off workers from any company that has trimmed 5 percent or more of its workforce in the past year. They can use the tool to form alumni networks to exchange information about job opportunities or start new companies.

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 Former employees from struggling internet giant Yahoo! as well as Divx, which makes online video players, are both starting alumni networks with the Socialtext software in the wake of lay-offs that took place at those companies before the New Year. (Links to their network pages can be found at Socialtext's corporate alumni page).

Socialtext, which started back in 2001 selling wiki tools, has since built more Web 2.0 features on top of its core software, including social networking profiles (known as Socialtext People) and a Twitter for the enterprise (Socialtext Signals).

As more layoffs occur nationwide, the Socialtext software can help, says Ross Mayfield, president and co-founder of Socialtext.

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