Rypple is an enterprise solution that works in such a simple, effectual way that it borders on the elegant. It uses absolutely top-notch social web design to engineer a user experience that is focused on solving a single problem: how to gather honest feedback quickly.
Since its founding, Rypple has garnered some serious accolades from the media and users alike. Everyone from The Economist to “Wikinomics” author Don Tapscott have been singing its praises. Come this fall, new additions to the service will boost its ability to support collaboration among coworkers.
Rypple is a web-based service similar to Twitter, in that it takes fairly mundane technology – plain text input that is limited in length – and builds a platform around it that enables an immediately tangible ecosystem to develop online.
Except for analytics and tagging, it includes no other major up-front features except the ability to ask a question and provide anonymous answers. Via an admin panel, users of the paid enterprise version can do things like suggest questions and tags beforehand. This simplicity makes Rypple the kind of tool wherein the constraints on software open up room for social innovation around it.
In its current state, Rypple has already taken off in the enterprise. But a major addition already being tested will supplement the communicative powers of the software with a dash of collaboration. When the TouchBase feature is launched sometime this fall, users will be able to set regular face-to-face meetings and collaboratively edit the agenda.
Constant employee feedback and collaborative meetings might seem like the kind of enterprise 2.0 functionality made to please Gen Y and drive management off with fears of anonymity. But by building social software around a habit already ingrained in business (the performance review) Rypple has put the capability of the web to work for enterprise.
