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Posted 17 October 2012 14:32pm by Graham Charlton with 0 comments

IdeaPlane is a startup that brings enterprise social networking to companies in regulated industries, such as finance, that might otherwise have been reticent about embracing social technologies.

I caught up with CEO and founder James Fabricant, himself a former executive at MySpace, to find out more about his vision for the company and the future of the industry.

Built in partnership with one of the worlds biggest investment banks, IdeaPlane is an enterprise social network that provides the best of both worlds: easy-to-use social tools combined with enterprise-grade security, compliance and privacy controls.

I truly believe that enterprise social networking (ESN) can aid collaboration and knowledge sharing among employees in the financial sector and in regulated companies such as law firms.

While ESNs are catching on quickly in many kinds of businesses, improving internal collaboration, it has been difficult for companies in regulated industries to tap into this trend because of concerns over security, compliance and privacy controls. Until now.

We launched about two years ago. As a former MySpace International executive, I experienced first-hand the power of social networking. However, I was always intrigued to find out how this power could be harnessed in a business environment.

Nowadays most of us use social tools regularly, whether its LinkedIn for professional networking or Facebook for socialising with friends. But the use case for businesses has never been entirely clear.

The company is privately funded at the moment; we have a number of high profile investors such as Kevin Eyres and Clare Flynn Levy are currently looking to complete a first major funding round.

See the rest here:
Start Me Up! A profile of IdeaPlane