CollectiveX is better than LinkedIn

Perhaps comparison with Airset, which is also group based with blogs and calendars, would be relevant? The ability to switch on visibility of other groups, where authorised, is an excellent feature of Airset.

Social Network 3.0 all the way!

Michael, my first post on your fantastic blog. Normally I agree with most of what you say, however this particular post makes some assumptions that I may not entirely agree with. So thought I should raise some questions and share my experience as a LinkedIn user.

Firstly I would question the group feature for business users. LinkedIn has a fairly rapid and useful Network Effect - as I add new contacts, their contacts in turn become part of my activities on LinkedIn virally. This helps me search within thousands of potential contacts if I am in sales, marketing or looking for jobs or candidates for employment. A “semi-closed” group concept may NOT grow as rapidly or have such a wide search base.

Secondly, assuming that like LinkedIn the new app will be used mostly by business users - there are questions regarding usage patterns. I don’t know if many business users would take to a public groups based app for sharing calendars and sensitive meeting minutes. What if one of the group members innocently links into an industry group which has members from competing companies? If this kind of usage does not take off, then what’s the whole point of having a group in the first place?

The other side to this is how the app approaches the users in the first place. From your post I assume that bio creation will be a key feature. Who will be the first users to put in the time and effort on this? Job seekers, freelancers, contractors - period! And job seekers will want widest possible network unhindered by “semi-closed” groups.

Revenue model - if size of groups determines the cost - who pays? The group organizer? Distributed over the entire group? Again comes back to usage patterns. Will the groups be used for specific projects where numbers justify the costs and there is clarity in who bears the cost? If the answer is yes, then in this kind of usage the group remains mostly closed, therefore no viral growth!

Well I have raised a lot of questions and a few disagreements. Can’t say I am heading in the right direction without using the new app firsthand. However if it helps the developers of the app start a discussion around this as honest feedback from users of a competing app - then I guess it will be worth the time spend!

I am big fan of web based social networking apps and want to see better products in the future. However based on my experience using what is out there - web based social networking for business - still needs a lot of thinking through in terms of business models, monetization, usage patterns and uptake.

Manav Sehgal
http://www.agilemap.com

LinkedIn has something that CollectiveX doesn’t have - a very good name, branding wise. Business users who would use a social networking tool will be loathe to use something with a name that sounds, well - to be honest - socialist (”collective” - sounds like an old Soviet work farm).

At the many conferences I attend, I hear business users telling each other about “getting LinkedIn.” It’s got a monstrous amount of buzz in the business community.

I’ll check out CollectiveX but won’t use it; branding is an important thing to think about when trying to get traction for a new tool.

Cheers, Martin

Hey there, Michael! Love your site. Have you seen all the changes to jotspot, lately? They’re goin’ nuts over there! I haven’t seen CollectiveX in action, yet, but I wonder if they might be the real competitor to jot?

Hey Michael,

what’s up with the continued posts of vapor? It’s all well and good to share what you “know” being on the inside but it does the rest of us no service. I’d prefer to simply get the notice once their beta is public so we all can make our own decisions.

Love your site…just wish you would hold news a little longer until these sites actually are released.

Hi Michael,

Is Collective X planning on building an Enterprise Gateway. I am building / deploying a series of Web 2.0 solutions for my firm of 130,000 and we need a gateway that plugs into our HR systems and our LDAP system. We want to be able to automatically comfirm who is part of our firm on the social network. For CollectiveX, that would mean that we want to be able to confirm who is part of our firm’s group. BTW, I have been trying to contact LinkedIn to pitch this same request for a while. Big companies will only truly embrace Social Networks when they have control over who gets in to their groups.

Nope, no good. If anything, I would like to see a passive desktop interface similar to what http://www.imeem.com uses. One of the problems with social networking is that once you’re at the site, there really isn’t much to do.

By providing both a website and a passive desktop interface (similar to AIM, YIM, etc.), you cover both grounds.

Then again, I think the next big thing will be a social marketplace/classifieds system or peer to peer marketplace/classifieds system.

this sounds interesting. when are they launching? and the question is, can anyone createa group?

I might say openBC rules in Europe!
https://www.openbc.com/

Thank you - 1 Million mark
http://blog.openbc.com/2006/02.....1_mil.html

Many interesting comments. It seems that the comparison to LinkedIn has led some to assume that CollectiveX is a public service ala LinkedIn… it’s not.

CollectiveX is a collection of private intranets that are highly useful for pre-existing groups that need a central place to share a calendar, files, fascinate discussions, etc. Additionally, the service is a powerful tool that enables those group members to build deeper working relationships with each other.

Comparing CollectiveX to LinkedIn is not exactly comparing apples-to-apples. LinkedIn is good at what it does… and we are good at what we do. However, the biggest difference is that with CollectiveX, you are only able to search within groups that you are associated with, you can choose what you share with each group… and no one knows who those groups are except for you.

I like this idea of a “community site”, this is in way of new web, social web 2.0

Michael:
You have a good eye for products and UI, but a terrible judgment on business. Collective X has zero prospect as a business and LinkedIn is thriving. (You might also note that eBay and MySpace are the most poorly desiged sites on the web.)

This service doesn’t really sound like a social networking site at all.

This sounds more more like an advanced version of Basecamp than it sounds like a LinkedIn competitor.

If it is trying to play in the social networking space, I would agree with each of Manav’s excellent questions above.

Jay: Let’s place a gentleman’s bet on this?

Absolutely. Collective X, at best, is a low dollar acquistion ($10-30 MM range).

LinkedIn is a public company sooner, rather than later, or worst case an acquistion at $250-500MM.

In answer to Manav’s post (and I’m a first-time poster, long-time lurker here), I wanted to respond, taking into account what Clarence already posted.

I think CollectiveX is absolutely something my organization would be interested in, whereas LinkedIn is really marginal. There is a need for better social networking within a company in many cases, and if CollectiveX delivers, it will be a really useful app that I would champion within my Fortune 100 company.

What really needs to happen at some point is to merge in some meaningful way the ‘closed social network’ a la CollectiveX with the ‘open social network’ a la LinkedIn or Friendster, enabling (let’s say) all the field agents to network closely with marketing, product development, and others within the organization, without having the marketing/product dev/etc. folks being necessarily exposed to the outside world.

I’m not sure what form such a bridge would take, but I know I will be watching CollectiveX with a good deal of interest.

What I am curious about is the business model underlying CollectiveX — is it to be YAKWASB (Yet Another Keyword Ad Supported Business) or something else altogether?

-rsh

I agree with some of the other comments regarding whether it’s really a level comparison. Linkedin focuses on one audience with open access whereas CollectiveX focuses on segregated, closed groups.

Whether it is financially a viable concept or not will be determined by the users that do create groups and in turn how well those groups are received and leveraged by invitees.

Will there be cross-group collaboration? How well will the groups mature if they are in isolated vacuums?

CollectiveX actually looks to be a new generation of Yahoo! Groups (formerly eGroups) than a competitor to LinkedIn. Since Yahoo! Groups has languished at Yahoo! there is a real opportunity to do something interesting with the Groups concept.

CollectiveX actually looks to be the new savior to all of our lives. Especially since it involves ajax, web2.0. Hopefully it will integrate podcasting, rss feeds and big 3-d buttons.

I am a beta tester, I actually receive an invitation for beta testing today. I have access to it!!!

What Stanley said, in comment 25.

And the revenue model has perverse incentives. Instead of being rewarded for building a big group and introducing many people to CollectiveX, you are charged for it.

So people will actively try to keep groups small, unless they are specifically business related and can cover their own expenses.

Unless they tweak their biz model to offer no charge access to any non-business groups, they’re never going to get the church, alumnni, volunteer, and charity organizations where many people get their first intro to these kinds of collaborative tools, and decide to form one themselves. If they are counting on viral growth without that–zzzzzt! Sorry. Ain’t gonna happen.

Having said that, I hope they tweak accordingly, because there is a real need for good, collaborative and relationship-building tools in group space. And as Stanley also said, Yahoo ain’t doin’ squat with it. And I can’t say Google is doing much better, either.

I like this concept a great deal and can definitely see the value of managed membership social network. I think some of you are missing the point, particularly the reasons that prompted this web application.

I am also a member in many organizations. The advantages of using this tool are very obvious to me. What would be interesting to me is the ability to use this type of social network within my company where groups = departments (also for cross-department working groups). In this sense, it starts to look like Sharepoint, only much easier to deal with.

This is a fantastic service and I am overwhelmed. There is no comparison to LinkedIN this is different and there are a lot of ways how this can be used.

CollectiveX does lack certain things like Polls, Image Gallery, but ROX!

It�s the only time of the year I wish I had Sky to watch the whole terrible but unmissable award show live. We used to have Oscar parties to watch it all through the night!

If any of you are interested in a full-fledged review of this great service, you can check out mine. I’ve clearly outlined the pros, cons and just about everything you’d ever need to learn.
http://chronotron.wordpress.co.....-20-style/

Nice comparision - CollectiveX vs. LinkeIn. Ever tried openBC? OpenBC covers both, network aspects and group aspects with free groups, premium groups and even OEM versions for corporate networks. And there are more networks, existing or soon to come. To declare CollectiveX the spearhead of social networks 3.0 - no way. We are still waiting for good social network version 2.0 applications …

CollectiveX is better than LinkedIn and its completely different, it is an all-in-all with enough emphasis on the right spheres to rock any user. In collectivex registering is quite simple and as soon as you finish, you can customize your group and invite as many members as you want. You get a subdomain for your group. Paid users get a lot of options, more space, permissions, and lots more customization options like designing your own template and such but nevertheless the features make up for the lack of options in free groups but still people are happy with their free accounts.