Grouply is a startup trying to improve the online “groups” systems (Yahoo/Google Groups) currently used by over 100 million registered users. Their first goal was to create a simple management tool for easily tracking updates across your groups on the two networks. You give Grouply your account credentials and they organize your accounts in a more convenient manner (see our earlier review). Their second goal, has been to bring those systems up to speed with the latest social networking enhancements.
The newly launched features are collectively called “Grouply Social” and include all the social networking features you’d expect. User profile pages show your interests, personal history, and contact information. The pages also support multimedia like most social networks, allowing users to share photos, videos, and “widgets” from sites like YouTube and Slide. Members can also befriend each other, with full privacy controls. You can decide who has access to your profile and what portions they can see, similar to Facebook.
The rest of the internet is clearly blowing past these older “groups” services when it comes to usability and engagement. Sites like Tangler, Wetpaint, and Klostu are creating whole new systems to bring online forums up to speed. As we’ve said before, Grouply is taking an evolutionary approach by absorbing users and data from existing systems and enhancing their functionality. Grouply recently raised over $1.3 million.
YahooGroups already has “Facebookish” features attached to it.
It’s called 360.yahoo.com
I don’t get it. These are mail lists. My email client “merges” those two and any other mail lists alonf with my other email.
Why would anyone bother with this?
It just doesn’t make the point?
http://technoq.blogspot.com
Social startups these days just want a big canvas, to share a bit of the facebook dream.
RIP Michael Klein (founder eGroups==>Yahoo Groups)
Soap talks about Yahoo’s360 service, which I think is disappearing. Perhaps absorbed into their Y!G beta product might be a better term, and the main function of that seems to me to be on visuals rather than function, which seems in keeping with Y!G history of development.
NeoLuddite says s/he does not get it. Have you actually tried Grouply? Grouply is about sharing your experience of Y!G rather than (as is with your own email client) being a personal experience. In Grouply you can bookmark, tag & rate messages all of which is shareable across other users. Whether this is of use depends on the type of group. The archives in some groups are of little interest to anyone, however in other groups there may be definitive posts and being able to highlight these as a group experience is what Grouply is partly about.
AnonTroll asks why anyone would bother with this. Well, it depends on how heavily one uses Y!G. For some people it may be a main plank of their business & marketing strategy, for example there are several very important LinkedIn groups on Y!G. Also there are over 5000 freecycle and similar groups, many of which are incredibly active, now with the specific support for this community their are some strong reasons for over 5,000,000 active users to actively consider Grouply.
Technicle reports on picking up on the Facebook dream. Well Facebook, for good or ill is helping reshape the Internet and, imo, other social networking sites may ignore them at their peril.
Also I have a big problem with a third party’s site wanting to know my passwords…
The explanation on their website doesn’t hold water.
http://blog.grouply.com/nobody-loves-a-spammer
Unfortunately, a number of negative rumors and false speculations have been circulating recently about Grouply, as evident in recent comments here. I’d like to clear them up with some facts:
@Michelle:
Grouply does not spam – People are referring to the “tell a friend”-style invites that enthusiastic Grouply users have been posting to their groups. This got a bit out of control on Super Bowl Sunday for reasons we cannot explain. We immediately put some controls in place to limit the use of this feature. You can read more about what happened here: http://blog.grouply.com/nobody-loves-a-spammer
@TS:
Grouply is not a phisher and does not steal passwords. In fact, many services (e.g., Meebo for instant messaging, T-Mobile for email access via BlackBerry) ask users for their Yahoo passwords as a way to provide them with advanced services. As TechCrunch readers know, this is all part of the Web 2.0 trend of openness and information sharing among web applications. Grouply uses the Yahoo password to automatically connect users to their Yahoo groups, and that’s all. Passwords collected by Grouply are encrypted and are only readable by the Grouply application, not directly by a human. More on that here: http://blog.grouply.com/protect#password
@Steve:
Any Grouply user can delete their Grouply account at any time, directly from within Grouply. Go to Settings > Discontinue Using Grouply. In addition, group owners can block their groups from Grouply if they want.
@Winifred:
Grouply and Grouply users are not in violation of the Yahoo TOS. Grouply users are simply choosing to read and interact with their group messages on Grouply instead of in Gmail, inbox.com, etc.
@ C. Carter:
The Gmail website has controls in place to ensure that I can’t read your emails. Similarly, Grouply users cannot see messages in Grouply for groups they do not belong to. Grouply users can view only the messages from their own groups in Grouply.
I urge anyone who has questions about Grouply to review our FAQ at http://blog.grouply.com/protect or contact me at mark@grouply.com . You also might want to try Grouply yourself! Test accounts are available for your use.
Mark Robins
Co-founder/CEO, Grouply
The concept of this is quite cool. Maybe I’ll set up another account for such things, but right now I can’t be bothered. Would be even better if you could get something going with many other forums all around. I have a whole bunch of forums outside of google/yahoo that would make something like this very handy.
My freecycle group just got accidentally spammed by someone who joined Grouply – I don’t care whether Mark says Grouply does not spam, an unsolicited e-mail sent to a list that is not germane to the business of that list IS SO a spam. Seems she didn’t quite understand the interface and, according to her, the default when joining is to e-mail your whole group inviting them in bright, vague (ie really dodgy-looking) terms. Maybe it isn’t the default, but it must be quite easy because it really was accidental. She’s mortified, we all got her home phone number to ring her up direct if we were that cross, which I call a real act of contrition.
The unsubscribe foooter said that you could block e-mails from grouply for a month if you wanted: given that after the superbowl fiasco groups shouldn’t be invited more than once a month anyway, this seems paltry. Being one of those people who has a life largely beyond the screen. I want to be able to bar this stuff forever. That kind of thing makes it look dodgy too.
And the idea of joining any third party service that wants your password was literally a laugh-out-loud idea in this household. Even to my 13 year old.
I dont think you guys (Grouply) have thought this through. Your initial rush is probably just the types that will join anything for personal reasons and the scammers. I would imagine anyone that does join this will got a lot of inconsequentianl email.
You want me to enter my yahoo login, NO WAY
As for the “facebook dream” I have neighbours who wont use a messenger client but constantly leave trivial messenger type messages on their facebook feed?
Cant see the point?
Well, snopes has their opinion, and I agree with them.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=508572
I don’t give out user ids and passwords anywhere.
Instead of more ways to be chained to the “on-line experience”, why not leave the house, meet your neighbors, get ready for the end of the oil age…
Perhaps grouply means well and thinks that this is a good idea, but the potential for having computer security violated and for the ever popular ‘unintentional’ spamming is just to high for me to even consider joining.
I don’t know if the service is intentionally sending out spam or it is a lack of clarity of their sign up service, but it isn’t making them any friends. A number of groups are on the war path because of all of the messages that are received about joining grouply.
Redesign, rethink, and quit bombarding inboxes with spam and this might be worth considering. Right now it is a security nightmare and a source of unwanted emails.
I cannot believe you have promoted this complete scam. Grouply is sending out spam messages to any groups you belong to asking them to sign-up for grouply. I have been kicked off loads of groups because of the spam grouply is sending, spam that appears to be from me!!! People GROUPLY IS A SPAM SCAM, do not join and please Techcrunch do the right thing and tell the truth
Grouply is a scam, pure and simple. They’re spammers, and they are a blight on the Internet. They should be SHUT DOWN for all the crap they pull.
Here’s what Snopes has to say about it:
There are a few new services coming online which are social
“networking” sites similar to My Space and Facebook. One of these new
services is called “Grouply”. Grouply is tapping Yahoo lists and
reposting the messages to Grouply members. As soon as ONE list member
joins this service, all of our messages will then be archived by
Grouply. Grouply changes your email address to (yourname)@grouply. com.
for the purpose of your Yahoo list mail only. They will also go into
your Yahoo account and change all of your preferences regarding how
you view your mail, whether you get individual posts or digests, and
whether you can be directly added to any of a million other Yahoo groups.
In order to do this, Grouply requires that you give them your Yahoo ID
and password. I am truly hoping that most of our members are smart
enough not to hand over that information to ANYONE–especially to
another web service! There is no guarantee that this information that
Grouply is aggregating is secure, thus leaving your sign-in info
available to spammers and hackers–including all of our list files and
photos.
At this point, there is no way for us to block Grouply’s access to our
list (although that is being worked on). Until there is, I will be
checking daily for list members who may have innocently joined
Grouply. I will be unsubbing and banning them, plus making direct
contact with them explaining why we will not allow this in our
membership. They will be welcome to rejoin once they unsub from Grouply.