What is Sixent?

Sixent.com is a free social networking service that lets you configure and selectively share profiles and content with your diverse network of contacts. It helps you build more meaningful and relevant interactions with friends, family, co-workers and anyone else by letting you share your life differently. At Sixent, it's not about sharing less, but rather sharing the right information with the right people. Sixent.com is currently in a Beta release.

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What does "Beta" really mean and when will the final product be ready?

At Beta, Sixent.com contains most of its core functionality but we are still adding new features and want to learn what end-users think of the product before declaring it as a full first version. During this Beta period we hope to gain insight from users in terms of impressions, bugs found, and suggestions. Their feedback will help us to keep Sixent's product development in line with end-users' needs.

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Why have you developed a social network?

Social networking platforms enable individuals to connect and collaborate online. Their member base extends beyond the boundaries of more traditional online communities and in doing so, deliver a more complete, satisfying user experience. We think social networks are a natural complement to online communities and a valuable addition to the way we work and live as individuals. With Sixent, we'd like our members to create a large and varied social network that becomes a place where they can achieve anything. After all, with more members, there are more connections, more content and in the end, that all leads to more opportunities for everyone.

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Can I create a profile at Sixent.com for my business, school, association, non-profit organization, etc?

During Beta, only individuals can create profiles on Sixent.com. As part of our roadmap for Sixent.com, businesses and other organizations will eventually be able to join the public network and create profiles. For now, your business or organization can create a Group within Sixent.com to showcase itself and access the ever-growing number of Sixent users.

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Are you making Sixent available to your corporate customers?

Yes, Sixent Enterprise is offered as a service to corporate and non-profit enterprises.

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How does Sixent.com compare to CommunityZero.com?

Sixent.com is a next-generation consumer-focused social networking platform. Right now, its functionality does not significantly overlap with the capabilities of our proven CommunityZero offerings for enterprise-grade collaboration. The foundation of CommunityZero is one of group collaboration around content. Each community is an island, walled-off from the wider, global network of online users. A CommunityZero.com community relies on its administrators to really stimulate initial growth until a "critical mass" of users is reached and the community becomes somewhat self-sustaining. Sixent takes a different approach by focusing activity around individual users. The social networking tools in Sixent strengthen the value a user can gain from participating as part of a greater network, instead of only private communities.

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Will Sixent.com eventually have all the same features as CommunityZero.com?

We're certainly keeping the strong focus on security, rich permissions and inter-operable tools that are the foundation of our CommunityZero offering. However, we believe the market needs a new offering with a Web 2.0 feature set that is more relevant to how we live and work today. As a result, some features in CommunityZero.com are not present in Sixent.com but you can expect all the popular tools like Discussion Boards, Media Gallery and File Sharing will be retained and improved upon in Sixent.

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Does your new product mean you're ending the CommunityZero.com service?

Over time, Sixent.com will evolve to include collaborative capabilities that may be of interest to select CommunityZero.com customers. As more functionality is continually added to the free Sixent service, we expect that our CommunityZero.com customers will naturally want to use it instead of CommunityZero.com. For most customers, this migration will probably happen over the next twelve months. We will keep you updated and invite you to learn more. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact us directly at info@ramius.net.

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When can I migrate my CommunityZero communities over to Sixent?

You can create your community on Sixent.com right now by establishing a Group. A strategy to consider is to run a new Sixent Group in parallel with your existing CommunityZero community and link them together. In our experience, trying Sixent out in advance can make the final move much easier because your users will have already familiarized themselves with the new platform. Unfortunately, there is no automatic or electronic migration of users or content from CommunityZero to Sixent.

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How does Sixent Enterprise compare to CommunityZero Enterprise?

Sixent Enterprise is currently being released with the same feature set as Sixent.com. That means not all of the features enterprise users of CommunityZero are familiar with will be available for a while. Over time, Sixent Enterprise will evolve to include a full set of collaborative capabilities that may be of interest to corporate customers. Until then, CommunityZero Enterprise remains available to businesses to build scalable and secure online communities.

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Will Sixent Enterprise eventually have all the same features as CommunityZero Enterprise?

We're going to take this opportunity to look again at what CommunityZero Enterprise offers to corporate customers and update the feature set to be more relevant to how we now live and work. That might mean that some of the features in CommunityZero Enterprise are not carried forward into Sixent Enterprise but if they are still regularly used, we will certainly retain and improve on them. You can expect to see a similar focus on security, rich permissions and inter-operable tools.

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Are you exiting the online community space?

Not at all. We think online communities are an essential component of any social networking platform. They are such a valuable addition to the way we work and live as individuals that we have built them into Sixent - they're now called Groups.

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Does your new product mean you'll no longer be offering CommunityZero?

CommunityZero Enterprise will continue to have a place in the market for corporate customers who want a feature-rich online community platform without needing a rich social network. We anticipate that corporate customers will see value in the combination of social networking technology and online communities, which will be provided under Sixent Enterprise. CommunityZero Enterprise will not be withdrawn as a commercial product unless demand significantly diminishes.

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Will you continue offering improvements to CommunityZero beyond bug fixes?

We're still listening to CommunityZero Enterprise customers for their feedback and ideas, but we're not planning to release any new features in the software. All of our engineering effort is now being put into Sixent. Of course, we will continue to release bug fixes on a regular schedule as required to keep the software functioning effectively for our existing customers.

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How long before existing CommunityZero Enterprise customers must move to Sixent?

There is no immediate deadline for existing CommunityZero Enterprise customers to move to Sixent Enterprise. Of course, we'd like you to join Sixent when our enterprise version is ready but we will work with you to determine whether the transition is relevant for your organization. If you do decide to migrate your communities to Sixent Enterprise, it may be best to coincide the switch with the date of your annual subscription renewal. Alternatively, you could align the switch with a corporate or community event. Whenever you decide to move, we recommend you have a clear understanding of Sixent's new features and how they can benefit your organization. A plan to make the most of Sixent Enterprise before beginning the move will go a long way to easing the challenges of transition. And of course we're available to help you make this assessment.

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Why didn't you offer Sixent to enterprise customers from the start?

We thought about this a lot. In the end, our belief that individual use will inevitably define what is important for enterprise use meant that we decided to focus on a consumer launch and build some momentum before releasing the technology to enterprise customers. We think it will make for a much better product in the end.

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Will you help to migrate my communities/data over to Sixent Enterprise when the time comes?

Sixent Enterprise is a new product from the database up, so it is not a simple task to migrate communities and data out of CommunityZero and into Sixent. Certainly for the next year, we don't expect to have a tool that automatically migrates data into Sixent. When the time comes for you to switch, you can talk to our Professional Services team to develop a migration plan and get more hands-on help.

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Who should I contact if I have questions about my CommunityZero Enterprise account or about Sixent?

For questions about your CommunityZero Enterprise account, you should contact your Account Manager. Or submit your question through our contact request form.

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Is Sixent Enterprise fully segregated from the public population?

Corporate use of Sixent Enterprise is fully segregated from the public population. That means you can setup custom URLs and brand look-and-feel, build your own population and run reports to track what is happening without the concern of unintentional cross-over from Sixent.com.

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Can I customize the profile fields for my corporate use?

Yes, you are able to do this for your private social networks in Sixent Enterprise. In the consumer network at Sixent.com, the profile fields are common to all our consumer users. If you have a suggestion for what you would like to see changed, drop us a line at feedback@sixent.com and we will include your idea in our ongoing design sessions. We're always open to great ideas of how to make Sixent better.

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Will I be able to connect the corporate site to my existing base of users?

Just as with CommunityZero Enterprise, our current online community offering, we intend to provide a Single-Sign-On feature as part of our Sixent Enterprise platform that allows you to connect with an existing base of users. The details of this will be published closer to the release date for this feature in Sixent Enterprise.

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Will you offer an API to read and write data remotely?

That's certainly our intention. We want you to be able to use Sixent as flexibly as possible. Right now, our priority is to extend the feature set to a more comprehensive level. Once that is done, we will look to release functionality aimed at opening up Sixent. That is most likely to include taking in data feeds from external sources, offering APIs to read and write data remotely and also tools to integrate Sixent with third-party applications such as Twitter and Friendfeed.

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Will you be compatible with OpenSocial to allow integration of external applications into a Sixent corporate site?

Sixent is being designed as a flexible social networking platform that enables users to do meaningful things. That means opening up the platform to external applications and enabling consumer users to integrate them as they want to. Compliance with OpenSocial standards is one way to achieve that goal and forms part of our longer-term roadmap for Sixent. When it comes to corporate, white label use of Sixent, IT policy regarding the use of third-party applications will also factor into what the end user is able to do with Sixent.

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