Newsgator has acquired Tomoye, a social networking platform for Sharepoint. The acqusition makes Newagator one of the largest enterprise collaboration companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space and positions it as a vendor with the deepest ties to the Sharepoint environment.

Details of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition buoys Newsgator’s reputation as an enterprise collaboration provider, almost exclusively for the Sharepoint platform.

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Newsgator says it now has 2.1 million paying users, which it claims makes its the largest social computing vendor. It’s a claim we are a bit skeptical about as there are so many possible ways to define exactly what it means to be a social computing vendor.

Newsgator has always had deep ties with Microsoft. it began as a news aggregator that embedded into Outlook. In recent years, Newsgator has transformed into a collaboration provider. its focus is on Sharepoint. Microsoft seems to look kindly on Newsgator as a partner. In contrast, companies like Jive, that integrate with Sharepoint, are seen more as competitors.

The acquisition appears to give Newsgator deeper social networking capabilities but perhaps more so gives it a position in the Governmnet 2.0 world.

Tomoye was founded in 2000. Its most significant installation is with the U.S. Army, where it has 150,000 users. Customers include the Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Air Force and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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Social search was in the news this past week when Google and Bing announced that they would be getting access to the Twitter fire hose. A flurry of subsequent posts speculated on what this “social search” would entail, and some expressed concerns over privacy and spam.

But social search is not something to be afraid of. It’s really just an extension of behaviors that we’re used to in the real world, brought online, thanks to the advent of real-time social computing.

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First, people have sought help from others for search problems and information-seeking tasks for a long time. Prior to the Internet, this was our primary way of getting information. We either asked a librarian to help us find something or, prior to that, we spoke to each other to spread information and seek help. We can reasonably treat this current trend in social search as a return to that familiar state.

Secondly, social search is no scarier than the Web itself. Social search will not make you easier to find. If you’re the type of person whose social network data appears in search results, then you’re already incredibly findable on the Web. Your tweets may reach more people than you want, but this also means that your ideas will be exposed to a wider audience, extending your reach and influence and presumably improving your brand. As before, if your tweets are currently open to the public, you’re already reaching more people than you know.

The very real issue of relevance, though, comes up when dealing with social search. Noise, false information and spam could dilute a set of search results and distract users from their quest. But spam is context-sensitive. Well-targeted ads aren’t regarded as spam; in fact, many people don’t even know the difference between Google ads and the main set of results. Same with search. A Twitter post linking to an article on diet supplements may be perfectly relevant in a query on “dieting tips and tricks” on Bing. In any case, finding spammers on Twitter should be relatively easy judging by the follower-following ratio or similarity of tweets.

Social search is also not a fad. It’s an improvement on limited algorithms that only index static pages. Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström remind us that we’re in a transitional state from a Web of documents (in which algorithms were sufficient for surfacing relevant data) to a Web of people (in which PageRank no longer captures what’s happening right now or happening among your group of friends). Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg reiterated this at the Web 2.0 Summit, saying that there is a “shift going on from an information economy to a social economy.”

Social search is one mechanism for leveraging the value in this shift.

So, as you get used to how companies like Google and Bing implement social search, think about how your community of Facebook friends, distant acquaintances in your Google contacts, nearby friends from location-based services and publicly bookmarked items might help you search better.

Guest author: Brynn Evans is a PhD student in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego who uses digital anthropology to study and better understand social search.

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At the end of his keynote on Monday at Sharepoint 2009, an interviewer asked Steve Ballmer about social computing. He recounted a story about a friend of his, a CEO for a Fortune 50 company. Ballmer said the guy is adamant in his opposition to social computing in his company. But if he had assurances that corporate data would be safe, then it might be a different story.

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It was an interesting end to Ballmer’s keynote. It was all Ballmer, yelling, practically, at the crowd to make his point about the ways the social web will make it into the enterprise.

Ballmer sounded like a guy rallying his troops. He kissed his fingers to his lips as if he were talking about a masterpiece. He then told the audience that after the conference they will be equipped to tell the Sharepoint story. And they will be the ones who bring social computing into the enterprise.

This may seem like arrogance to some but we are further convinced that Ballmer’s remarks do reflect the monumental fears that top management has about social services like Twitter and Facebook. But it is also important to look at what Ballmer says and temper it with the reality of the market.

Ballmer said that Sharepoint provides the path for social computing in the enterprise. It provides security, information management and compliance along with social features that allow people to communicate in the way they want.

For many steeped in the social web, it’s clear that the Sharepoint 2010 features look pretty basic. But for the enterprise user, the features may be just right.

For instance, Sharepoint 2010 uses a ribbon interface, which is quite familiar to most people who work in the corporate world.

Simple things do matter. People may now upload pictures from their computers to a Sharepoint site and then re-size the image. Sharepoint 2010 includes an activity stream for each user. Team sites are now wiki-oriented. Users may use wiki editing commands.

Search has been beefed up for people to find experts faster. For instance, if you are looking for a person with product sales experience, you can do a search with results showing the person’s profile, which shows notes, ratings and their activities.

Tagging is unified in Sharepoint. For example, in a profile you may see the tags that are associated with person who appears in your search results.

These are all fairly basic social features that are old-school to many people. But in many ways these features are just right for the mass market enterprise user. Plus, there are some capabilities to make the platform compelling. These include the ability to make mashups.

We know there are a host of other factors that will come into play and provide some advantage to the companies that provide social technologies. But the reality is that many of these smaller companies are working in Sharepoint to provide an additional social layer. NewsGator made an announcement today about its integration. Jive Software, which today announced a new $12 million in funding, integrates, too.

These companies are important to social computing in the enterprise. But it will be the big players that forge the path.

The major force is still Microsoft with Ballmer leading the way.

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