Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

SAP goes Facebook with social network dashboard

By | June 17, 2010, 2:30am PDT

What can an enterprise software company do with Facebook? SAP is trying to highlight its analytics and dashboards with a Facebook app. And the idea may be crazy enough to work.

Simply put, SAP hasn’t exactly created Farmville, but its app gets the job done. SAP’s Facebook app is dubbed the Friend Optimizer, which mimics SAP’s Crystal reports to allow users to explore their network and create a leaderboard of social activity.

In a nutshell, you can see how your online friends stack up with others. The app also shows off your social activity and tells you how to optimize the network. The big picture for SAP is that apps like this bring home what the company’s software can do.

I’ve seen a lot of less productive apps. SAP’s app is worth a spin.

Here’s a screenshot:

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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