Grouply Brings A Bit Of Facebook To Yahoo/Google Groups
Nick Gonzalez
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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