NewsGator has launched a new version of Social Sites 3.0, with features for tracking colleagues’ status updates and streamlining knowledge within a corporate team. The social computing platform is built into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, giving business professionals the integrated social tools they need to keep teams abreast of ongoing projects.

The two main new features for NewsGator Social Sites 3.0 revolve around microblogging and the practical ways in which microblogging can be used within an enterprise setting. For starters, the Socialpedia feature is a self-assembling wiki of sorts that organizes the information shared amongst team members in SharePoint. The Knowledge Explorer is actually a visual representation of search queries in order to help you find the best person to help you.

The good thing about the NewsGator update is that it’s incorporating real ways in which you can utilize information already being shared across a given company. NewsGator achieves this by automating some of the shared information, while making tangible connections between employees so that they can work more efficiently.

NewsGator has always been about streamlining the process of sharing information, making it easier to track what you’ve already done so that you can better focus on what you need to do. After teaming up with Microsoft SharePoint, NewsGator has taken a decidedly enterprise approach to its products. Seeing the inclusion of microblogging features with this latest update indicates a continued interest in creating value around short-form communication.

From real-time search to corporate use, microblogging is becoming a readily utilized platform that we can pull from. Organizing all of this information for practical use cases has been the primary challenge for developers in the past year or so and we’re beginning to see the ways in which this type of information-sharing can be best converted into readily accessible data for users.