Two weeks ago, I had tried to access the social application that IBM said they were planning to use for the IBM Connect conference, a product called Vivastream. However, in the eleventh hour, IBM decided to retool IBM software to play the role that was envisioned for Vivastream.

Talking to other analysts, I learned about the back channel discussions that influenced IBM to make this last-minute change. Basically, a number of analysts argued that IBM should use its own software — Connections — to serve as the social platform for the conference. My take is that a conference is not at all the same as working in a business, so there is nothing wrong with using a specialized app like Vivastream for a conference: after all, the use cases are completely different. But it seems that IBM insiders either agree with the detractors, or decided to use Connections for other reasons. And so I won’t get a chance to comment on Vivastream this week, but instead, the reapplication of IBM Connections in a context that is isn’t really designed for.