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The rapidly increasing popularity of social networking platforms is news to no one. Twitter was steadily drawing users at the beginning of 2009 and then exploded since Oprah joined in April, and names like Facebook and LinkedIn are more and more familiar in the household. This proliferation of social networking is not just for the masses though—as a tool to developing brands it already indispensible to many businesses, and this spring many CRM systems began integrating social networking features into their platforms. This incorporation was inevitable, and with it has come a new kind of CRM customer.

Systems by Salesforce.com and the like initially implemented social CRM (sCRM) features to allow businesses to build a meaningful rapport with their customers and provide timely customer support. Recently it has become a means for following the conversations surrounding particular brands and topics, and is fast becoming invaluable to the industries who deal in brand creation and development rather than sales: the PR and marketing communities. The gamer-spawned Lithium Technologies was at the forefront of sCRM with a platform for brands that was customer-driven, and many CRM providers began adopting social networking elements to provide better and more efficient customer support. Startups like Scout Labs and Buzzstream have evolved this system into a slightly different animal, creating packages that track and organize media and social media coverage, and helping those who need to build and maintain relationships with the individuals who are starting and influencing the conversations. CRM systems are very much associated with sales- and enterprise-driven customers, but this developing ability to monitor web content—and monitor it in real time—is broadening the CRM systems’ customer base,  giving PR, advertising and marketing reps a new way to focus on building relationships.

This week, Zoho launched Zoho Discussions, their new platform for creating public and private support forums for employees and customers to comments on a particular topic. Features include branding widgets, integrated chat, user profiles, SEO options, and “sticky” posts (which is a highlight a community moderator can award to a post that is especially good or important) just to name a few.

Zoho Discussion forums are completely customizable to represent a company’s brand, and the sheer number of options for customer service administration makes Discussions more than just another forum platform. Because Zoho has a history of making integrative products, speculations about integration possibilities are rising. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett thinks Discussions will be a boon for ERP software, arguing that such a sophisticated forum application could provide the real-time information necessary to the alert systems driving transformational value between collaborative teams. Others see this new release as simply another step in stride—though a very accessible step, at that—with Zoho’s tradition of creating new products and add-ons to their existing goods. Whether Zoho Discussions’ ambitions turn out big or small, for now the platform will be a definite draw for the SMEs the startup tends to attract.

With the technical preview of Office 2010 several months ago, Microsoft announced a web-based companion to the suite, Office Web Applications, which some predict will be the “Google Apps Killer.” Last week, Microsoft released a partial preview of the online package to beta testers and invited guests. Web Apps features extensions of PowerPoint, Excel, and Word (and eventually OneNote), will be hosted in Windows Live SkyDrive and Microsoft SharePoint, and has received positive feedback thus far.

SkyDrive is a free, online storage space of 25GB available to any users of Windows Live (of which there are about 500 million), and will store Web Apps content created by Live users. SkyDrive is not intended for enterprise users, so businesses interested in Web Apps need SharePoint—storage that will soon be integrated with the MS Cloud, Azure—or Office volume licensing.

Like Google Apps, Web Apps doesn’t require any desktop applications—users without the desktop Office suite can still view content. However, as it stands, Web Apps seems best thought of as a supplement to the desktop platform. One of the biggest issues is that Web Apps’ Word only allows for document viewing, not editing. In addition, Web Apps doesn’t allow for web site building, and it only facilitates simple composition within PowerPoint and Excel. The official version of Web Apps will permit editing within Word, but some of the other editing inabilities will remain and only be available through the desktop version.

Since the preview’s release, reviews have been favorable. Given Microsoft’s aim to create seamless interaction between OS, browser, and mobile, it is notable that a preview of the SharePoint mobile integration was well received. Also, many testers were pleased to see Web Apps function capably outside of Internet Explorer. For users looking for light web-based CRM, perhaps the biggest boon is Web Apps’ similarity to its desktop counterpart. The bells and whistles aren’t all there, but there’s no learning curve for those already accustomed to Office Suite apps. We’ll have to wait for kinks in the test version to be fixed before judging whether Web Apps is indeed the Google Apps “killer,” but for now, it is a formidable opponent.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) recently released their annual e-business report, and Google came out the preferred Internet Portal and Search Engine, scoring a telling 9 points ahead of the next runner up. The quality of Google’s search results isn’t the sole factor in its popularity—their web presence is near inescapable given the number of applications bearing its name. With the proliferation of Google Apps, it is worthwhile to consider the effects on CRM systems, and to what extent the two are competitors.

With Google’s cloud computing capabilities and impressive number of applications—including the “holy trinity” (spreadsheets, documents, and calendar)—it is often the preferred method of managing customer relations for small businesses. It cuts down on overhead costs, and smaller businesses are not as easily deterred as larger ones by the security issues of the Google cloud and the occasional outages.

In some cases Google may not appear to be a major CRM competitor, but many CRM platforms have added Google integrations, both at the small-business and conglomerate levels. Salesforce.com has been integrating with Google since 2003, and in 2008 announced Salesforce CRM for Google Apps. The scalability granted by the cloud makes this platform to accessible by businesses of all sizes, though the aforementioned security and outage issues prevent many large businesses to relying on Google Apps for their CRM needs.

Zoho recently launched a sign-in integration with Google, and taken with Salesforce’s own integration, it is obvious CRM providers acknowledge the power of Google Apps even if they don’t fear it. These integrations are certainly smart, and some providers are taking their recognition further and adding in-cloud platforms—Salesforce has Service Cloud, and Microsoft announced Azure almost a year ago—to cover all bases.

It’s tough to say whether Google Applications will act as a serious competitor to large-business CRM systems, given that its current shortcomings would most likely not be easily fixed without changing the attractive price point. With some segments Google Apps it presents a challenge, but otherwise it is a tool for circulation.

Presentations at the annual TechCrunch50 conference just ended, and there were two Web 2.0 startups that could make wonderful improvements to enterprise software.

Threadsy. Given the surge in social network integrations into industry platforms, Threadsy could prove a very popular—and easy—way to merge the various yarns people are so anxious to integrate. Looking at over 40 social networking applications, Threadsy creates two streams: one is an “inbound” feed (emails, @ replies on Twitter, etc.), and the other is “unbound” (Facebook news feed, Twitter, etc.). Users can send emails, update profiles, and browse pictures from the application. Considering the number of networks Threadsy taps into, security issues could arise, but it is certainly a promising communications aggregator, and was a runner up for the conference’s grand prize.

Crowd Fusion. Crowd Fusion takes features from wikis, blogs, and more to create a unified content management system. Where other applications lack structure, Crowd Fusion provides it. The team’s presentation included a demo of creating a blog post. Crowd Fusion provides a feed reader and live search integration, and can suggest to the writer both potential topics that have not already been covered by the site, and related blog posts to link to within the entry. Topics covered in the entry (for example, a product discussed on a gadget blog) can be logged to the site’s database with a tagging widget that makes tags from actual landing pages within the site—this database of landing pages is not only useful to the audience, but also attractive to search engines. Finally, these landing pages can be designed for viewer interaction, creating strong relationships between user and site.

With the declining economy many CRM providers are offering separate parts their popular platforms to give clients cheaper ways to manage their relationships, and in the process they are creating systems that will surely continue growing after the recession.

Earlier this year, Sugar CRM launched the on-demand Sugar Express, which offered sales, marketing and support features, as well as price points for up to five and ten users per year. Operating on SugarCRM’s Open Cloud computing platform, Sugar Express is great for small businesses, but still offers enough bells and whistles as to be an economical solution for bigger businesses looking to cut back.

Salesforce.com is also following the small-business lead, and recently deconstructed its CRM platform to offer small businesses with one of the platform’s most touted convenience: contact management. The Contact Management Edition stores and manages contacts accounts in the cloud for a humbling $9 per user per month. It integrates with email systems to track conversation, and runs pre-configured and customized reports.

These simple sparks could set a new blaze in the industry—the Content Manager Edition will also be automatically available with integration with Google Apps (including Gmail), and is thus even more than a small-business CRM solution.  A partnership with Google will provide Salesforce.com with a portability that will definitely put pressure on other CRM providers to develop comparable platforms.

Not even two weeks into September and Microsoft Dynamics has announced specialty accelerators for its CRM platform—there will soon be Education, Insurance, and Non-Profit templates—as well as a social networking accelerator.

Using xRM, the new development platform for relationship-tracking applications, three new mission-centered Microsoft CRM templates were created: the Education and Insurance models are catered to those industries, as is a Non-Profit model that is also intended to increase the efficiency of membership workflow within member-driven coalitions.

Another feather in the Microsoft CRM cap is the Twitter Accelerator, which is a medium for business professionals to monitor and analyze their customers’ conversations on social networking sites. Integrating Twitter, the accelerator offers a dashboard for real-time status updates. Additional social networks are to be introduced in future releases, but for now Microsoft CRM aims to boost users’ sales databases by connecting with micro-bloggers, thereby getting a handle on both customer insights and the people driving conversation.