I agree with Thomas's comment over at Stewart Mader's blog entry that there is no one size fits all answer. Nevertheless, I believe that software vendors need to strike a careful balance between using PS to ensure that the software is successfully implemented and adopted vs. trying to make significant profit from PS. For a vendor that is truly focused on advancing its software, PS should have a supplementary role within the org rather than a dominant one. Moreover, the vendor should have key PS partners, who are focused on business solutions and have vertical industry expertise because the vendor's own PS will be much more software centric. In many cases, the best approach is to have a 3 way joint effort between the software vendor's PS, an industry focused PS firm, and the customer.

Unstructured content (which includes social media) is increasing exponentially. Analytics/reporting is key to reveal/track/correlate emergent signals. I'm proud to say that Telligent has invested early to tackle this (huge) problem. You can read more about what we're doing on my blog: http://communityzenmaster.com/blogs/lliu/archive/...

Sure is taking a long while. I'm waiting anxiously for my comment from last night to show back up, so I can reference it on another blog's comment that I'm about to post. :-)

Heh, this is only a good time to start a company if you have a great idea that you're truly passionate about and are willing to commit to it for at least 2-3 years. And definitely try to avoid VC money for as long as you possibly can.