looks cool but it is expensive.

Very interesting. This seems worth joining and adding my contacts to.

This is really cool. The best feature is the RealTime Bio Builder. It’s a brainless resume builder. I love it.

More social networking sites. How many do we need?

I agree with TheWeb20Dev and KP. It’s expensive and is yet *another* social site.

Somebody aught to create a watch list and see how many of the reviewed sites stick around.

i’m down with the ‘email-turned-into-discussion’ feature, but it didn’t seem like it was offering threading of messages (nesting for responses to responses and all that).

the dues-paying/member-suspension stuff looks legit.

it adds to the game.

It looks like 37 Signals meets LinkedIn…even the pricing structure is similar to that of Backpack and Basecamp.

There is no way to search groups on the site?? I started to sign up but it wanted me to define and name my group. I don’t want to create a group, I want to view and possibly join groups in my area. Perhaps I am not understanding how this is supposed to be used.

I personally believe it to be more appropriate to call collectiveX an online collaboration tool. It’s actually quite close to basecamp as mentioned before. Indeed the website has quite a few widgets and positive things. The business model looks very profitable. Also there should be quite some viral influence going on once users join.

Little negative part though. I don’t believe the collaboration features are strong enough to get people to really start using these features. Most networks contain many non IT fans and they just won’t start using these websites just to track their network. In order for this website to succeed they need stronger collaboration features. Some suggestions:
- Stronger File management (versions, more then 10 mb limit, tagging)
- ToDo lists (couldn’t find them.) etc.

People will join for the collaboration, not the networking part.

I’m a bit taken off by the fact that the $19/month plan is still “ad-supported”. What’s the point of paying anything if there will still be ads on it? Is $19/mo for a simple plan not enough money, are square banner ads still necessary?

And isn’t Facebook coming out with something exactly like this very soon?

Just a few things to note guys.

I had signed up for the beta version more than a month ago. CX is not meant to yet another SNS. It’s meant to be a platform to help grow a current group that you are already in charge of. So if you want an online platform for your current group, then approach CX from that perspective.

Having said this, there are some things that CX falls short of that I told them for feedback.

Only managers/moderators can invite new members. This can severely limit growth of the group. I wanted an opt-in feature where we allow members to invite members too.

Second, when members sign up, our email is open to all other members on the platform. That can be dangerous as you may have members who a are bit overzealous and start spamming fellow members.

CX looks promising but still has a ways to go as well.

Mike… to address your issue with the ad supported $19 per month plan… here is the rationale… first off… the plan supports unlimited members (for personal and informal groups)… additionally the plan increases file storage to 500 MB and supports email blast functionality.

Can you imagine a group of 10,000 recieving free email blast functionality? That would be very taxing on our servers. I think its a great deal at $19/month.

Otherwise.. it makes more sense to upgrade to one of our full-featured Professional Plans. Thanks for your interest and for taking a look… we appreciate all feedback.

Later today I will post a comment to address all other questions / concerns.

To the poster griping about another social networking site - I don’t think this is as shallow as many of the other social networking sites that we’ve seen. If you think about the fact that it does take a while to develop these kinds of services and they probably sprouted at around the same time, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t see many services sprouting at around the time as they approach the end of their development timelines.

It’s not as expensive as other solutions I’ve seen and actually quite reasonable!

Regards,
Roj

Hi Clarence

Just for your info :

The tour movie is just audio and no picture on a my PowerBook with safari and firefox, not sure why that is?

Also your email server is rejecting email on info@collectivex.com (linked to on contact page)
Thought I’d pass that on

looks like a cool solution for existing groups though

regards
Al

Cool, thanks Clarence, that makes sense.

CX looks great initially. I have been looking for something to replace hosted SharePoint for a group of attorneys, social scientists, activists and communicators we’re working with.

The 10mb file space in the free version is really low, but I’m going to throw this out to the group and see what people think.

I also agree that this is not a social netorking service, but a collaboration tool. It seems to require that you have an existing group rather than individuals to join looking for a group to tap into.

I think this could complement LinkedIn, delivering a different set of benefits - both can be valuable.

#13 Can you imagine a group of 10,000 recieving free email blast functionality?

Yes, I can. I’ve seen it in YahooGroups, GoogleGroups, and in “me too”. Sure, “email blasts” ares not exactly the same as “email groups”, but when it comes to account for the costs, I’m not so sure who gets the prize.

This is not to critizise your service at all, in fact I like it, but I was a bit surprised about the 10,000 email blast argument. Is 10,000 really such a high number for you?

All in all, I believe that bandwidth (where most costs would come from) should move to a flat-fee thing for service providers, just like consumer internet access, cable TV, etc. instead of the current “pay what you use” model.

To echo Keith’s thoughts, CX is meant to be a collaborative tool and not meant to be YASNS [yet another social networking site]

They are certainly open to feedback. When I tested this thing a month ago, they allowed you to only have 10 members to a group, which is quite silly. They’ve since taken that out and allowed for unlimited members– good on them.

Also, as I suggested via feedback, it would be nice to see an online RSVP system ala Evite where members can RSVP on the platform. Would be way cool!

The best comparison I can draw is to say that CX will be competing with YahooGroups. YG is good in certain areas but fails miserably in terms of a platform for building deeper relationships. CX is a *possible* platform for us to build an online presence for our typical offline groups.

I’m not sure if Clarence cares to answer this, but has there been much request to the idea of having an option whereby members can invite members too instead of just relying on the moderator to invite. If you think about, the found of the CX network doesn’t know everyone and a group can only grow through the word of mouth of the members.

thanks…Dean

I have signed up for the demo version and my group could not share a single file without paying. Not even less than a total amount of 2mb files..

We could not send direct messages between members…

We did not receive any notice of new messages posted in the forum (the basic of a private forum).

In the end, most of us forgot about the site and we do not use it anymore. We are still looking for a free site for small groups and small amount of files to share. No cost for the websites, and it would greatly help to advertise the site from the beginning.

One more thing, we couldnot mass invite people we know from our outlook contacts..

I really hope that CX will launch an improved version of the site. The idea is v. good. But it is expensive and still lacks from features that A LOT OF other websites provide for free.

Rob!

Indeed a FREE ACCOUNT >> 0 mb and a 19USD account >> 500 mb ! You should give free accounts a 2 o 3MB file storage..

my bad! I apologize, I have just verified that NOW the free accounts have a 30 mg file storage! VERY GOOD NEWS! I havent noticed it before (demo version did not permit any file storage)

i just recently was going to take another stab at using LinkedIn* - but having taken a look it reminds me of being in Jail & completely locked down* - not very Social-Freindly to say the least!

i’ll definitely give Collective X a looksee*

;))

collective x is bullshit, to register you have to fill 3 or more pages of forms, and its just STUPID! it’s don’t worth paying for it.

CollectiveX is designed for “organized groups” — groups that come together for a purpose (i.e., alumni groups, social groups, corporate workgroups, clubs, teams, etc.). We are social in that one user can belong to multiple groups via a single login & profile… but can communicate different objectives and share different connections (privately) on a group by group basis… this more accurately mirrors how networking is done offline.

Our private beta:
Many changes to CollectiveX have taken place since our private beta. As noted, we removed the 10 member restriction for FREE groups… FREE groups can now have unlimited members and also include 10 MB of file storage. Additionally, we have activated the automatic (consolidated) email notifications that detail group activity — keeping group members in the loop even when they are not logged-in. Email notifications are delivered (daily, bi-weekly, weekly, or bi-monthly) depending on the users contact settings. We have also reduce our pricing across our Professional Plans.

Our public beta:
Over the next 90 days we will be in public beta and will correcting bugs and gathering user feedback to improve the service. We are very early in the development of the service — Rome wasn’t built in a day — but I believe that we have created a solid foundation to build upon. In addition to the social features, we will be improving the calendar, discussion threads, file cabinet, and email blast features. We will also be adding “smart groups” (i.e., tagging functionality enabling sub-groups) and several other features.

Specific questions answered from above:
Question by KP: “CX is too expensive”
Answer: We disagree… CX is very inexpensive for organized groups — our target market.

Question by Ryan: “There is no way to search groups on the site”
Answer: Exactly… go to Meetup.com if you are looking to meet people. CX is not about building new communities… it’s about empowering existing ones.

Question by Dean Hua: “Only managers can invite new members”
Now that FREE (informal) groups are unlimited in size… we will more than likely add a setting in the near future that will allow managers to enable all group members to invite members… in the meantime… why not assign manager privileges to all group members?

Finally… is CX as social networking tool… or a collaboration tool?
Answer: We feel that it is both… thus making it Social Networking 3.0 (as David Hornik calls it)… a Social Network… that has utility… beyond mearly sharing and making new contacts.

I hope this helps… we look forward to continued feedback from our users… CX will continuously improve as a result.

Thank you,
Clarence Wooten
Founder & CEO

Hi Clarence- Thanks for willing to offer feedback.

In regards to your suggestion about assigning certain members to become managers, I have given that some thought. I would only do it if I really trusted that person and they would not abuse managerial status. That is certainly one way to get around it. But in the *long run*, I think it’s better that there is an option that allows for us as managers to allow anyone to invite others to the group. I’ll offer further feedback when I get a chance.

dean

As I was reading the article, I thought about my own usage of social networking sites. I belong to 5-7, though I’ve found that everytime I find one better, my visits to the other sites become less frequent. Out of all the networking sites I have ever belonged to, I probably visit two: a regular social site and a professional site. There’s a similar trend with people I know, and I would venture into that most people will stick to the sites that they’ve already built relationships with.

Social networking will never die completely, but I think the chances of a pioneering site to become succesfull is getting very small.

I just enrolled two groups in the public beta. One, a 12-15 member board, the second, a 1,000 member professional/social networking group for employees at a large global enterprise. The company does not provide an online platform for information sharing or collaboration, so CX is a big step forward, even informally.

It will take a lot of time to invite/migrate our 1,000 listserv subscribers. I will make everyone in our leadership team a manager. It would be helpful to have a bulk feature to upload emails for the CX list invitation recipients.

Susan
New Fed Network

I bet Clarence at CollectiveX is very happy to see comments like yours, Susan (#28 above).

Mike,

You are right indeed. Susan is using CollectiveX the way that it is intended to be used. We are working on features that will make it easier to invite members to a CollectiveX group. Over the next two weeks, we will be incorporating an open invite feature that integrates with blogs and better import options for uploading names and email addresses of invitees.

CollectiveX is listening very closely to our users and will adding features to make the service better over time.

I can second Clarence’s willingness to listen to his customer base and their needs as well. Kudos. Dean

Hey, If you guys are interested in a full-fledged review of collectivex, you can check mine out.

It’s a fantastic service which really pwns, though I’d like some better features like Polls and the like.

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I have signed up for the free demo version and my partners could not share a single file without paying. Not even less than a total amount of 2mb files..

Has any tried the new packages of collectivex?
The package allows group managers to customize their group and obtain added customer support and the package also includes some components like custom banner, login box, one time member data importation and feature tour.

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