Collaboration Platform Socialwok Now Integrates With Facebook, Twitter And Buzz

Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products, was just integrated as a partner in Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace. At last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail. Today, Socialwok is becoming more than just a collaboration platform; the startup is integrating with Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and RSS feeds to allow users to tap into their outside social networks within Socialwok.

Socialwok is now a full-fledged Twitter client and allows users to Tweet directly from its platform, as well as track a brand or keywords on Twitter from within the application. Additionally, users can monitor and track updates on a Facebook page. Socialwok is also allowing users to import RSS feeds and share it within a company’s Socialwok account. And Socialwok is integrated with Google Buzz, and allows users to tap into their Buzz streams from within the platform and share content in Buzz from within Socialwok.

With the addition of social networking functionality, Socialwok is becoming more than just a collaboration platform. In fact, the application is developing into a full-fledged social CRM, taking on Salesforce’s Chatter, Jive, Socialcast and a host of other enterprise friendly social networks. CEO Ming Yong tells me that after the startup’s launch on the Google Apps marketplace last week, Socialwok signed up over 4000 businesses to its service. Prior to the launch on the marketplace, 6,000 domains and tens of thousands of users were using Socialwok.

Socialwok, which employs a freemium model, has steadily been adding features and improvements to its application, including releasing a new version of its HTML 5 mobile version for Android and iPhone browsers. And in the process of developing an innovative application, startup managed to catch Google’s eye. In addition to joining as a pilot partner on the Google App Marketplace, Socialwok was chosen as one of the showcase companies for AppEngine technology at this year’s Google IO Developer Sandbox (Socialwok is powered by Google App Engine). And the startup wrote a blog post on Google’s Enterprise Blog about Socialwok.

We’ve continuously written that if Google doesn’t buy the startup, they should at least heavily promoting what they’re doing. And it appears that Google has taken the latter route. For now. There’s no doubt that Socialwok could face the same fate as Google Docs killer and collaboration platform Etherpad or Microsoft Word collaboration plug-in Docverse.