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Why would it be hard to archive and index chats or IMs? My Facebook chats and IMs are already archived on Facebook. I even have a local archive in my iChat fold

by rdouble 15y ago

Why would it be hard to archive and index chats or IMs? My Facebook chats and IMs are already archived on Facebook. I even have a local archive in my iChat folder. Seems like that problem has been solved. The article just means his company is shifting to something like Jive instead of Exchange. Maintaining an internal mail system is a gigantic headache for many reasons. You have continual spam and phishing attacks from the outside as well as internal users using their email as a document repository. Closing off the external threat and using purpose built software for document exchange and internal communication is totally sensible.

shaggyfrog 15y ago
There are all kinds of risks in letting Facebook handle the archiving of a company's internal communication, their bad track record with matters of data privacy notwithstanding.
- rdouble 15y ago
  I meant that a searchable Facebook style interface for archiving corporate communications isn't impossible, and already exists from at least one vendor. Not that a company should outsource their communication to Facebook.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  the article says "Facebook-style", not "Facebook".
  - shaggyfrog 15y ago
    The post I'm replying to is specifically talking about saving Facebook chats.
jerf 15y ago
Archive use of third party services like AIM or something is technically challenging for a variety of reasons, particularly as the industry continues its slow but steady march towards SSL usage. Products exist which can penetrate this encryption and log the network traffic directly (when I say "challenging" I mean just that, not impossible), translating it into logged IM entries (and yes, they do it by obtaining the keys from the services in question), but they are awfully pricy compared to just declaring that IM shall not be used, and there are enough protocols out there with enough usage that there's some frequent pain around losing logging with protocol updates. You can also host an IM server internally in which case logging is trivial, but many people aren't even aware that this is an option, or don't want to deal with IT to set it up and maintain it, or don't want to purchase the off-the-shelf products which can do it but are also more expensive (virtually by definition) than just declaring it shall not be done. I used to work in this field. I do not recommend trying to break into it, there does not appear to be a market here.
- rdouble 15y ago
  I didn't mean the first thing you mentioned, more like the second. Mostly I meant that you can already buy enterprise social networking suites complete with instant messaging. My post must have been worded badly as it seems to have confused people. My comments about Facebook and IM were in response to a post that suggested there was some technical difficulty in archiving and searching IM and social networking style posts. Obviously, there is not, because Facebook already does it, and similar capability exists within iChat itself! It would not be difficult for a vendor to provide an integrated social network with IM to enterprises, and indeed, there are vendors which do just this. I disagree that there is no market for this. Jive's S1 says they have 15M enterprise users spread out over 600+ companies.

by rdouble 15y ago

shaggyfrog 15y ago

There are all kinds of risks in letting Facebook handle the archiving of a company's internal communication, their bad track record with matters of data privacy notwithstanding.

rdouble 15y ago
I meant that a searchable Facebook style interface for archiving corporate communications isn't impossible, and already exists from at least one vendor. Not that a company should outsource their communication to Facebook.
brown9-2 15y ago
the article says "Facebook-style", not "Facebook".
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  The post I'm replying to is specifically talking about saving Facebook chats.

jerf 15y ago

Archive use of third party services like AIM or something is technically challenging for a variety of reasons, particularly as the industry continues its slow but steady march towards SSL usage. Products exist which can penetrate this encryption and log the network traffic directly (when I say "challenging" I mean just that, not impossible), translating it into logged IM entries (and yes, they do it by obtaining the keys from the services in question), but they are awfully pricy compared to just declaring that IM shall not be used, and there are enough protocols out there with enough usage that there's some frequent pain around losing logging with protocol updates. You can also host an IM server internally in which case logging is trivial, but many people aren't even aware that this is an option, or don't want to deal with IT to set it up and maintain it, or don't want to purchase the off-the-shelf products which can do it but are also more expensive (virtually by definition) than just declaring it shall not be done. I used to work in this field. I do not recommend trying to break into it, there does not appear to be a market here.

rdouble 15y ago
I didn't mean the first thing you mentioned, more like the second. Mostly I meant that you can already buy enterprise social networking suites complete with instant messaging. My post must have been worded badly as it seems to have confused people. My comments about Facebook and IM were in response to a post that suggested there was some technical difficulty in archiving and searching IM and social networking style posts. Obviously, there is not, because Facebook already does it, and similar capability exists within iChat itself! It would not be difficult for a vendor to provide an integrated social network with IM to enterprises, and indeed, there are vendors which do just this. I disagree that there is no market for this. Jive's S1 says they have 15M enterprise users spread out over 600+ companies.