Mind mapping software solution Bloomfire (which begins at $9 per user per month, when paid annually) emphasizes capturing institutional knowledge and presenting it to an organization's newest members. This is useful whether it's implemented for internal purposes or for a customer support or sales system. Bloomfire's customers include Domino's, the Livestrong Foundation, Whole Foods Market, Metagenics, Elixiter, Dun & Bradstreet, and Genband. Bloomfire is sold per user. Costs are $9 and $17 for the Basic and Plus tiers, respectively. Special pricing is available for enterprise customers with 1,000 or more users and also for on-premises installations. There is also a demonstration subscription. And, as you'll read, though it has many strengths, Bloomfire didn't come out on top as competitor Expert Software Applications Mindomo (36.00 Per User (for a 6-month-long license) at Mindomo) won our Editors' Choice award in this mind mapping software solution review roundup.

Bloomfire subscribers, as with the similar Front & Main Honey (4.00 Per User Per Month (Billed Annually) at Honey) service, can complete their biographical information such as name, department, expertise, interests, and time zone—or just import your data from LinkedIn. (A similar option to integrate with Google Apps led to an error message from Google but that's probably not Bloomfire's fault.) There is integration to post into Salesforce.com's Chatter product plus a variety of Facebook/Twitter-like notification options. You can create multiple users simultaneously by entering a list of email addresses or copying/pasting from a spreadsheet.

A challenge with social mind mapping software may be getting your employees to actually use it. Bloomfire addresses this with a gamification approach. Users can become Aces (for content with many likes and shares), Bookworms (for users who often like or share others' content), or Producers (for those who are prolific posters of content, questions, and answers). It is a similar incentive to achieving mayorship of your favorite locations on Foursquare.

To gauge users' production, there are pie charts that display rankings of top users in all categories and related data. Data can be sorted in 7-, 30-, 60-, and 90-day increments. A reporting feature visually clarifies which content most successfully enables collaboration and which is most-viewed. It's interesting to observe that the most useful content and most viewed content is not always the same. Administrators can also see a view showing who answered a question, how long it took, the degree of an answer's helpfulness, and whether the answer was officially accepted.

There are three main elements to the Bloomfire user interface (UI). A main menu with highlighted content stretches across the top. Filters such as Content Type, Groups, Categories, Tags, and Contributors are all in a left-hand side navigation menu. The actual knowledge base is in the middle/right. It feels similar to browsing an e-commerce website—company officials said they had a mixture of Amazon.com and Facebook in mind. As such, each piece of content shows an image, poster's name, date, headline, number of views, number of comments, and number of "high fives" which is Bloomfire-speak for likes. Content is sorted by default into a grid, but there is also a list option. Users can also sort by what's bookmarked, popular, or recent.

Bloomfire has some interesting options for posting new content. Users get a WordPress-like UI where you can change the formatting, save drafts, or produce content in straight HTML. You can record content directly from a web camera, including for replies; schedule posts to appear later; review a post's history; and publish in a series, which is a way to automatically group your posts based on content similarities. Using a series would be helpful for posts representing a department or a project, rather than one person's independent content. Yet another option is to publish a formal question. Titles for questions are limited to 255 characters, but there doesn't appear to be any limit for the optional description field.

There is an option called publish quietly for posting without having everyone receive a notification. There's no formal option to publish loudly—a user asked on the Bloomfire community website and was presented with a tolerable work-around. Additional features that stand out in Bloomfire are a trouble ticket creation system and extensive resources such as tutorials and white papers. Other products offer similar resources but to lesser extents.

I tried the accompanying Android application and found it very well designed. It opens with a quick video tutorial showing, for example, how to take action on someone's post: You just long-press, hold your finger down, options pop up, slide your fingertip to the desired action, and let go. It is easy to do. There is access to all of the same features as in the primary desktop web UI. Of course, there's also an iOS equivalent.

Bloomfire officials said they're developing further customization tools, integration with RSS and Twitter feeds, and features that let you send specific content to outsiders who might not be system users. These features are planned for release in the next few months.

Outside of the service itself, the most unique feature is the Bloomfire community website. This is a public installation that serves in many ways as Bloomfire's public relations (PR), with posts about new customers and social learning. But mostly it is mostly where experts post insider tips and tricks about making the most of the product. Browse or search here by typing in your question and liking, commenting, or sharing the results. It is easy to imagine how this type of installation could be useful for almost any midsize or large organization, especially one with a distributed workforce.

Of the products in this mind mapping review roundup, Bloomfire, Inc.'s namesake product is most similar to the service by Front & Main Honey. However, Bloomfire has several more options than Front & Main Honey, yet is still easy to use. Therefore, it would be hard to rationalize buying the Front & Main Honey service unless low price is the utmost concern. Bloomfire gives you a lot more bang for the buck.

Mind mapping software solution Bloomfire is a good choice for visual-centric teams that need performance analytics.

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Bloomfire Review