I found this image looking for icons, but it made me wonder how much of these I knew the name and what they do. I came to 26, and you?

Information is at our fingertips, but often we don’t even use a fraction of the potential of our data. But that is about to change. New web services are surfacing, they turn data into information, for use.

Companies gather information about their customers. Why do you think most large retail stores have discount cards? To get information about you. Because if you know about someone you can relate, if you know what people like you can offer them something suitable. If you can see patterns you can predict other things they like too. But not in every situation discount cards work. There isn’t always an opportunity to learn about consumer patterns.

The new breed of tools that is surfacing is taking a different approach. They combine data you have already, primarily from your email but also from your social networking accounts, and combine that with data available on the web. From the same social networking sites, search engines, blog feeds and so on. Companies can add information from their CRM systems too.

All this information is providing profiles most companies could never have dreamt of. Not just information about what your customers do with you, but about what really interests them, who their friends are, what they write about and more. Scary? Maybe, in some contexts. But also convenient. Would you rather have a conversation with someone that relates to you or a dork that has no clue? Do you like to be offered products you like, or random stuff you don’t care about?

The two tools that seem to be front runners of this movement are Gist and Xobni. Although they both take a different approach, in essence they are doing the same: combining data and making it valuable information to you.

Xobni, the Outlook plugin that makes searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy. It is a plugin for outlook that combines your email data with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Salesforce and Hoover. It also offers features you’ll like as a personal user so it is worth checking out for yourself as well. The drawback? It is only available for Outlook, well and Blackberry too, but I’d love to have it for Mac, Gmail and iPhone too. I would even be willing to pay for it privately.

Gist helps you to “Know More About Who You Know”. I takes data from the same sources Xobni does, and additionally Gmail, CSV and vCard files, and combines that with information available on the web. It provides you with a host of information on people and companies and the relations between them. It even acts as a full fledged CRM system allowing you to create a dossier on people.

These are two good and distinct examples of how the game is changing. I’d be interested to hear about more examples if you know them.

You should consider this list a starting point, I doubt it is complete. Also it is only fair to say the ratings are done based on superficial screening of the promotional material on the websites. It is probably worthwhile to do a more in depth comparison, but that will take lost of time. If you find a solution missing please add it to the comments and I will check it out and add it also. If you have experience with one of the platforms your input would be highly appreciated in the comments.

Blogtronix rating: five star Blogtronix is an Enterprise Social Platform, with a suite of tools including blogs, wikis, documents & social media. These tools allow users in large and small organizations to build internal and external communities, and collaborate in ways far beyond email. Interesting are also the additional packages including LDAP integration, spreadsheets, workflows, compliance, video blogging, and advanced reports. Available as SaaS, Software, or Appliance.

Brainkeeper rating: one star Promote themselves as the leader in enhanced collaboration. Although they offer pages, blogs, forums, workspaces and more they focus on wiki and a way for people to connect to each other is missing. There seems to be a lot of functionality, maybe too much as the screenshots look cluttered and surely not a nice, clean and comprehensible web 2.0 style. Hosted and integrates with LDAP.

Firestoker rating: two stars Enterprise collaboration that puts the user first and gives your business the room it needs to grow. Allowing those in your organization to connect, collaborate and share in a conversational and comfortable setting. Although the only web page of the company looks intriguing the site does not give any information about the product. No feature list, no screenshots, no pricing, nothing.

IBM Lotus Connections rating: three stars Offers a home page with an overview of social activity, profiles, communities, forums, feeds, wiki, blogs, bookmarks and activities. Complete solution with a modern looking interface.

IBM Bluehouse unrated Interestingly IBM is developing another collaboration solution, most likely to be offered as a service. It offers file sharing, meetings, chat, forms, contacts, activities and live charts. It is currently in beta.

Microsoft Sharepoint rating: four stars Platform for sharing information and working together. It has presence, social networking, wiki, blogs, people and group lists, calendars, e-mail integration (provided you use Exchange), tasks, surveys, document collaboration and issue tracking. Integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products and can be used offline with Microsoft Groove. Highly rated by Gartner.

Novell Teaming rating: three stars Comprehensive solution, formely IceCore until acquired by Novell, that works in collaboration with other Novell tools. Has teaming workspaces, File sharing, Calendars, Forums, Tasks and milestones, Photo albums and custom folders to create helpdesks and guest books. There is also a conferencing client for IM, chat, Presence, Desktop sharing, Whiteboarding and voice conferencing. Integrates with LDAP. A host of functionality but bad looks. There is a VMware testdrive free for download.

Socialtext rating: five stars The very recently release version 3.0 offers a personal dashboard, profiles, group workspaces, collaborative document editing, blogs, comments and ratings, revisions, wiki, notification, mobile access, offline use and feeds. It is Open Source and available as appliance or SaaS based.

System One rating: one star Combines social software, semantic web and information retrieval technologies and runs as a service in standard web browsers. It looks like a wiki combined with contextual display of email, files and documents. It is supposed to work associatively, intuitive and flexible. It is a web-service, either delivered through a central data center or on premise hosting. It’s hard to find any real information on what it does, but its there, somewhere.

Sonar rating: two stars This suite from Trampoline Systems maps expertise, interests and relationships across the business and its external contacts by analysing email, contact data, documents, wikis, blogs and other corporate data. It has a portal (Sonar Dashboard) for employees and a desktop application for managers. It was one of the Red Herring 100 winners in 2008. Hard to find real information about what it does on the website.

Thoughtfarmer rating: five stars ThoughtFarmer is next-generation intranet software: wikis, blogs, discussions, feed, profiles, documents and social networking for effective internal collaboration. Distinguishing is that multi language and organizational chart. It runs on Windows and MYSQL and integrates with LDAP.

Know others or have an opinion on one of these: use the comments.