Yesterday I read a list of reviews of Lotusphere 2012. Especially around the next version of Notes, Notes Social Edition (hopefully will become nicknamed Notes Social Addiction) I have some questions. Maybe you can provide me more details?
From Alan Lepofsky’s blogpost:
The next version of Lotus Notes, named Social Edition will include a new Home Page featuring the same activity stream that is available to Connections users on the web. This new feature will require an IBM Connection server, but the pricing and licensing for that has not yet been announced.
From David F. Carr’s review for InformationWeek:
Organizations that take advantage of both Notes and Connections will be offered an upgrade to Notes Social Edition, which makes social content including the OpenSocial application embedding capability, available within the Notes environment.
Odd that Ed Brill does not mention this in his description of Notes Social Edition.
Can someone explain how the deal for Notes Social Edition will be?
Kwintessential Notes 
Notes 8.5.3 includes the entitlement for Connections profiles, which include the status update and comment features. So yes, one needs a connections server. If you are going to include any additional functionality from connections (besides Files) you will need to upgrade to full connections licences.
hi Mat, I assume you are talking about Notes 8.5.3 now, not 8.5.4 Social Edition. Or nothing will change then to have the activity stream in your Notes homepage (read: you need to have Connections to be installed for the activity stream)?
I assumed Domino would get it’s own activity stream ‘engine’?
Not that I am aware of. What I learned so far is that you will need Connections to use this new feature. Basic functionality will probably be available at no extra license cost (I have no proof for this). Now one could certainly build an activity engine for Domino but IBM normally does not implement in Domino what is available in another IBM product. IBM normally prefers entitlements in this case.
Domino is not getting an Activity Stream engine, but it will be able to contribute to the Activity Stream thru opensocial.
right, the one component of Notes/Domino Social Edition that comes from IBM Connections is Activity Stream. Everything else is built into Notes/Domino as a feature release, the usual approach.
Plus Notes Social Edition is a separate product delivered on top of 8.5.4. That is you will install 8.5.4 and then install SE on too once that’s is released which is not together with 8.5.4.