Online discussion aggregator and management service Grouply has taken $1.3 million in funding from Reid Hoffman, SoftTech VC, Harvard Angels, and Western Technology Investment.
Grouply offers a centralized discussion platform that allows users to track and manage their discussions on sites such as Google Groups (coming soon) and Yahoo Groups.
To quote Nick from our November 2007 review:
Grouply, in effect, takes over your interface with the groups websites. You can carry out all your normal tasks from Yahoo Groups, but with an added management and social layer. Simply give it your credentials and Grouply starts tracking your conversations across your groups. Technically speaking, Grouply does this by substituting an @grouply email address for your email contact to start receiving group updates on your behalf. All your messages are collected into one main feed with several intelligent ways of sorting through them for information you care about. Messages are organized by group, threaded by conversation, rated, and tagged. Any ratings or tags users add to a messages are shared with other members. Each message thread is automatically put into one of five groups identified by icons: discussion, wanted, events, for sale, and news. They’re also organized into summary feeds and smart digest, which only show you updates for conversations you’ve shown some interest in by reading.
Any idea how many active users they’ve got?
I’m a subscriber to 2 groups, one on Y! one on G. Never ever had any need to consolidate.
$1.3 million? Really? For this? Bah.
Money is gone with the wind!
The idea behind this is not unique at all. What is the ROI on this investment? What is the market cap on this? etc.
Too many questions. Easy money again!
I don’t think it is easy money. They are doing pretty good job there — not necessary everything must be unique but how it benefits user.
Good try :-p
Reserve space in deadpoo
LimeAll (www.LimeAll.com) is also looking for funding.
Too many sites are there around discussions good to know that this onehas succeeded to survive.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
good idea. information requires integration. that is why we tend to use outlook to collect and manage our emails, to use even file management programs. i came up with an idea just like blog. how about a personal “readers’ digest”? maybe the tech behind it is quite simple, it is really a new idea of customize a personal digest, isn’t it. Of course, you can use google blogger or simply subscribe rss to get information. But blog interface is not a social and attracting one. How about a customized e-magazine?
but for grouply maybe the details of discussion is hard to publish in a magazine cover haaa. well easy money? but new ideas are worth rewards, aren’t they? And moreover, grouply will not waste the money. cheer-up!
Arg…
Organizing information on a single interface…very interesting!
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
@grouply email about group updates on your behalf- that may work nice if you’ve only active group.
It is hard to build a platform that will interface with multiple sources. Anxious to test this out.
Michael
I don’t expect this to be the next Google but the lack of a unified interface for the 4 major platforms is a significant issue for a good chunk of the 200M+ people who use newsgroups. Looks more useful to me than 80% of the new ideas i see getting funded.
Yeah, it’s a very useful idea, they just need to infect the sneezers with this new service. They currently have 1500 links and they aren’t really attracting that much traffic, but I think that the idea is rather exceptional and the investments will benefit them greatly. They should be able to build traffic with the need of very little money - simple social network analysis and an ad up on Google and Yahoo Groups or a grouping of some sort of partnership would benefit this greatly. Google would like the idea of the mashup, but I’m unsure as to if anyone has tried this type of web app out yet. I’m giving this one a shot later on when I get a chance - looks interesting…
Oh and as for the number of users, it must be rather low for no uniques are registering up from what I can see, but the best way to see this data is after next month…I’d love a follow-up on this topic.
…and special-interest group discussions are a pretty prime target for targeted advertising. Wonder what Yahoo thinks about layering the app on top of Y!groups, and whether they will want to throw the functionality into their offering directly.
Decent idea. Will it make it big, probably not.
Who really is their target market?
The large majority of group users I would guess are non-tech savvy. They join one or a couple groups, but not dozens.
I would be very interested to know the marketing plan for this company (if there is one).
Entrepreneurial ramblings indeed, josh. “Group users” are not “tech savvy”? Are you effing serious? 99% of my 200+ friends are not “tech savvy” and would have no idea wtf these “groups” are for or why they would use them. Please get a clue and stop trying to be something your are not. If you got A’s in school you are an employee, not an entrepreneur!
@josh S-
If 99% of your 200+ friends are not tech savvy enough to use newsgroups (a favorite medium of stay-at-home moms in the Midwestand other places far from Silicon Valley), that suggests 198+ of your pals are technological retards. So you either live in a nursing home or a day care center amongst 4-year olds.
Inquiring minds (and circus peddlers) want to know: which is it?
It may be a worthwhile service, if it’s on the level. But I’ve been around the internet many years now, and am involved in computer security. Something about a company asking me for my logins & passwords rings alarm bells for me. Quoting their site…
“In fact, the main reason we ask for your Yahoo username and password when you register is so that we can ensure that your group membership information in Grouply is current.”
Sorry, not good enough.
And this, also from their speil…
“Your Yahoo password is encrypted and can be read only by the Grouply application, not directly by a human.”
Ya right. Tell that to all the illegal software crackers out there. Keygens are everywhere. And if Grouply’s app can encrypt, then it has the key to decrypt.
Being as how they’re a relatively new startup, I’d advise a little caution.
I see that they’re TRUSTe certified, but all that means is that they promised not to be naughty. Anyone can make promises.
They’ve managed to get a bit of serious funding in as well…
“Online discussion aggregator and management service Grouply has taken $1.3 million in funding from Reid Hoffman, SoftTech VC, Harvard Angels, and Western Technology Investment. The funding is on top of their initial $935,000 taken from the same investors in June 2007.”
On the surface, it’s got potential. But the potential is also there for a huge violation. Just think for a moment, what would you do with a few hundred thousand logins & passwords, and $2 million in your back pocket? Too much room for exploitation for mine. But that’s just one man’s words of caution (experience is a great teacher).
I think I’ll wait a while & see how it develops.
I’d expect tech savvy users to use extreme caution with ay site that requests, or requires, passwords from other sites to which one may belong. There is certainly room for mischeif and/or interesting errors, or downright foul play. I teach classes in social networking and see how this might be attractive & useful, but presently I’m in the ‘wait & see’ mode for Grouply.com!