Maryland based CollectiveX launched in February 2006 as a way for groups to create a quick and well designed social space online. Users could share calendars, files and contacts, and message each other on a forum.
We covered CollectiveX in our roundup of “build your own social networks” last month.The original idea overlaps with both LinkedIn and Ning. CollectiveX is a good place for groups like boards of directors to share contact information, files (board minutes, financials, etc.) and share a forum for communication. Since your business contacts are shared just with the people in your group, you don’t have to worry about the “LinkedIn problem: -being constantly spammed for introductions. And like Ning, CollectiveX lets users quickly and easily create a social network. There is less flexibility on the types of networks that can be created, but the added structure is good for certain types of users.
The new product that CollectiveX is launching now is called Groupsites. The video above gives a good introduction to the service. The company is expanding the service to allow for social, not just business, networks. New networks can now be public by choice, and users can create separate professional and social profiles.
Users have a single dashboard to access all of the networks they belong to. They can be viewed one at a time, or grouped. For example, a user can click a button and see all stored files for all groups, and then search within those files.
The basic service is free, and the company charges additional fees for additional storage, advertising removal, etc. Large companies can also pay a yearly license fee to create multiple networks. Accenture and others are customers of this enterprise product.
The company is also simultaneously launching directory of their open social networks at Groupsites.com.
CollectiveX is certainly comparable to some of the better funded sites who’ve spent millions on development. The company has raised only a very small amount of seed funding to date, and what they’ve done with it is impressive. They are also nearly cash flow positive, the company says, and should be profitable by year end. They are beginning to pitch venture capitalists on their Series A round of financing.
See Read/Write Web for more.
Wouldn’t most Board of Directors want the security of their own private corporate intranet to share that type of info?
ummm hasn’t yahoo groups been doing the exact same thing for….how many years now?
Who really cares to link to a board director of XYZ ? This is a minuscule market. If you look at all top social networks, one thing they have in common is the real people.
It’s not about board of directors at all. Did you watch the video. It’s much more like a white-label Facebook that can be made public, private, social or professional. I think CollectiveX 1.0 was more for boards and private professional oriented membership type groups. This post seems to be a little deceiving… its mixing info about CollectiveX 1.0 with CollectiveX 2.0’s Groupsites.
I tried the Groupsites using the business/Intranet feature. It reminds me more of Bluetie(http://www.bluetie.com) than it does Ning or KickApps.
The social aspect is more like yahoo groups in a sense. CollectiveX has done a great job of making this simple for the average user to get going so I think they will attract a market segment – but not sure where I see the revenues coming from, other then their enterprise portion.
The downside (at least from the FAQ) is that you cannot map your own domain to it like you can on Ning, KickApps, and others. The customization level is also not that deep, there is no API, nor ability to add widgets.
Since they have created more of a cookie cutter app then a social network platform, I would say they should not be lumped into the same market that Ning, KickApps, etc. are targeting. I do agree with Michael that they have done quite a bit in a short period of time and have done it well.
Rob,
Thanks for the positive words. Domain mapping and complete control of your own ads are coming next week. We do support widgets. You can add widgets to your profile, the summary page of your Groupsite, within discussions and (believe it or not) email blasts.
Enterprise and premium feature upgrades are the primary revenue sources at this time.
Clarence
CollectiveX
This is a hard-core product for buildling a business network, although other types of groups might find it useful as well.
It’s one of the most similar products I’ve seen to Microsoft Sharepoint on a pure feature basis- which is a great product but suffers from usability issues.
I run a group on CollectiveX which I hope is the premier collection of emerging international professionals working in markets between Brazil and the US in IT and new media (called ILA http://brasil-i...collectivex.com).
Members the group as a tool to gain better regional contacts, new business leads, market intelligence, access to resources, and generally help them navigate and take advantage of opportunities in each others’ respective markets. (Essentially market development, business intelligence, and professional networking). Represented are outsourcing and partnership firms, financiers of startups, heads of sales and marketing, business owners, lawyers, business owners, entrepreneurs, consultants, executives, etc.
I handpicked the initial members and CollectiveX allows me to maintain a high level of quality with regards to members. The site has been invaluable.
I am constantly pushing Clarence and his team to add new features that facilitate business, and the platform has developed into a very useful mechanism for tying people together across distances. If things go the way I hope they will soon need more collaboration/project management features, and they will need to allow the creation of custom pages (like @ goingon.com). I have also suggested that Clarence should do everything possible to offer the ability to develop the network for free but take a piece of any ecommerce or ad-revenue etc.
I have been using Groupsites for a number of weeks to support a newly formed team / closed community site of 25 individuals that I am a member of (http://sharks.collectivex.com). The product meets my needs because it was easy to set-up and customize and extremely easy for end users to start using and become proficient with. While limited in some functionality, the foundation is solid and allows us to do most of what we need right from within the application itself. It also allows those of us who are technically proficient to get creative and integrate other applications into the site. The flexible pricing model is also nice as it does not assume that one size fits all but gives you complete control over your spend on the product. Overall, I am extremely pleased with the product and think it compares favorably, probably better, to many other applications on the market.
In keeping a watchful eye on the development process I can say that Clarence and the entire CollectiveX team is responsive to issues and open to ideas, suggestions and feature requests. They are focusing on providing a usable product that is very value packed and think many would appreciate the power and simplicity of the product.
Take a look at http://Grou.ps
Nice article, I’ll learn many from this. Great job.
OnMyCity.com has had these features and more for 2 years! Why not come up with something new?
@craig – OnMyCity.com is not the same as CollectiveX. Even if it were, is the internet so small that there’s only room for one site with the same feature set? How many webmail apps exist? Gmail aint doing so bad and they weren’t the first by far.
Well you are right they are not exactly the same but the groups feature is very similar which amazes me that they get written up by TC and OMC having been one of the first has never been mentioned. Makes you wonder…
It’s all about user experience. CollectiveX has it, and others don’t. So if you think its about features, you are totally wrong. They have their act together. To use it… is to love it!
http://www.asso...er-collectivex/
User experience is very important, but what makes that user experience? It is the features of what your application can do for the users. I agree you shouldn.t have features just to have them. They must make sense sense to the user. What good would any app be without features? Why is cx working hard to roll out new features like domain mapping?
I have been using CollectiveX for the past 9 months to coordinate a local networking group for therapists, counsellors and psychologists (http://phf.coll...om/main/summary) The basic (free) feature set is ample for my needs and I have found the service to be very reliable and easy to use. What has been great about the collective x experience in recent times has been the “CollectiveX Champions” group where group leaders/managers can network with each other, and discuss issues/features directly with Clarence and the technical team. As a company they have been very proactive in responding to bug reports and feature requests which is excellent for users like myself who feel comfortable with social networking programs but wouldn’t consider themselves experts.
There is no doubt that there are multiple competitors in this market and I imagine it would be virtually impossible for someone to comprehensively compare the features/usability of the different services. I can say however that my use of Cx has been very positive and I intend on remaining with Cx.
Ning and Nexo win the feature wars by a long stretch in this category, but trying to use either for a working group or club is awkward and tedious at best. These are “play” sites, fanclubs and family picnics.
CollectiveX is the best I’ve found anywhere for a small-medium sized group or club to collaborate, coordinate, and communicate. It has proven handy both for a fairly savvy distributed group, and a local group with wide ranges of skills and schedules.
To steal a phrase from the open source community, “it just works”, and does it in a pretty smooth package.
Only gripe is that in the free version 25 m is a seriously small file cabinet, even for doc files.
Thanks Gareth, Richard and User Experience Guy (whoever you are) and everyone for voicing your satisfaction with CollectiveX. It is very easy to watch a short video or read a blog post and think that you get it. When you really don’t unless you have hands on experience putting a product through its paces. CollectiveX doesn’t have everything… nor do plan to add every imagineable feature.
However, we will contunue to add features that help small and large, social and professional, public and private groups to share, communicate and network without loosing control over their brand identity, privacy or members — nothing more, nothing less. We listen to our users as it relates to fulfilling that mission. We work dilligently to quickly add the features that our users want… but only when we can do it in a way that doesn’t degrade the user experience.
Feel free to judge and compare us after you have tried us. We won’t meet everyone’s needs… but we will continue to strive to meet the needs of groups that fall under our mission — and that’s good enough for us. Stay tuned
Clarence Wooten
Founder & CEO
CollectiveX.com
I think some people perceive feature bloat as desirable but coming from over 11 years of web development. One site should not try to be all things to all people. CollectiveX is set up in a way that addresses what’s important to groups in a business and social format. It does not fry eggs, make bacon or toast but what it does it does well.