It’s becoming common practice for corporations to ban on-the-clock use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of IM clients (OK, that’s also a security issue). But the power of instantaneous communication shouldn’t be discarded out of hand.
Allowing a team to network in real time, especially when team members are far flung, is a productive way to work, and as long as it’s not abused it can keep the team working together like a well oiled machine.

Of course, there are ways for you to do this now with public clients. Twitter lets you create groups so your team can communicate within the group, but some companies won’t let you use Twitter at all. You can also create groups in various IM clients, but again, these may have been banned.

Companies are looking for enterprise solutions that can be more closely monitored and yet still take advantage of instantaneous communication. One such product is Status.

Status offers several levels of group, from the free version that networks up to 5 people, to the Enterprise version which networks up to 100 in a branded solution. The app works on mobile phones, online, or (on a Mac) with a dashboard widget.

Discussions are archived just like the popular services, so you can easily browse the timelines to see when a particular discussion took place, what was said and who said it, making it easy to cross reference information.

All in all I think Status is well worth looking into if you have a remote team and no other networking options. Since you can’t communicate outside the group, it should be a easier sell to management too!