By ONG BOON KIAT

WHILE individuals around the world have embraced social networking services such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin and others, many businesses are still keeping them at an arm's length, fearing security and privacy breaches.

A made-in-Singapore offering from local firm Voiceroute could change that.

Dubbed Socialwok, this Web and mobile application platform is decked with features that Facebook and MySpace users will be familiar with, such as instant messaging, content-sharing, status updating and publishing to Twitter accounts.

Targeted at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it lets groups of employees and co-workers easily collaborate and share information with one another.

More importantly, it promises to keep companies that use it safe from prying eyes.

Socialwok is 'Facebook plus Twitter for business', said Voiceroute chief executive officer Yong Ming Guang. He said that this platform, which took six months to develop, is more secure than Facebook and others because it creates private social networks safeguarded by such technologies as Virtual Private Network (VPN) access, multi-level administrative controls, encryption and Internet Protocol (IP) address filtering.

Mr Yong is eyeing the global market and is confident of a rapid take-up despite the dour economy. He said that Socialwok's software-as-a-service delivery model will be a major plus point for cost-conscious businesses.

'There is no software to install, no upfront licence fees and no annual maintenance fee. Just pay when you use without worrying about whether the back-end infrastructure can scale. And you will always get the latest version. This is a key competitive advantage for us.'

Mr Yong has set a target of roping in 1,000 customers worldwide, at five-10 users per firm, over the next six months. The hosted service is priced at US$5-15 per user, per month.

The company is also eyeing developers to help it grow its business. Like Facebook, Socialwok can be enriched when third-party software developers create applications and widgets, or add-ons, that ride on the platform. Mr Yong aims to entice as many as 100 developers to board the platform over the next six months. They will be able to sell their offerings to Socialwok subscribers.

Four-year old Voiceroute was founded by three friends, with two other founders Navin Kumar and Vikram Rangnekar. Its mainstay business has been in unified communications software which garnered $400,000 in sales last year.

With Socialwok, the potential market has just gotten bigger for the young firm. Mr Yong noted that the global enterprise social market could be worth around US$700 million by 2011. Indeed, so bullish is the company on its new foray that it plans to change its name from Voiceroute to Socialwok soon.

Said Mr Yong: 'Our long term goal is be the salesforce of the enterprise social space.'

This article was first published in The Business Times.