Grou.ps, a startup based in San Francisco, has secured a $1.1 Million Series A financing round in a deal led by Golden Horn Ventures. Grou.ps will also now be open-sourcing a restricted version of its code, with a view to spreading its collaboration tools. This move is based around the idea of commoditizing the platform faster and then taking advantage of the fact that they can then hire the best programmers out there. Currently Grou.ps has about 200,000 active users worldwide, after launching a public beta in April.
The site offers chat, blogs, wikis, forums, mailing lists, photo albums, bookmarking, calendaring and maps among other features. You can run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one Grou.ps domain using a single login. It also will mash with content from Flickr and YouTube. In fact if it sounds a little like Ning or Wetpaint, then that’s because it has several aspects in common with those sites. One of the main differences are that Ning - with $104 Million in backing - has a much larger number of users and also runs ads, whereas Grou.ps doesn’t (apart from the AdSense code group owners can add).
Grou.ps founder Emre Sokullu, orginally from Turkey, was in Istanbul for the TechCrunch meetup this weekend (organised in association with Webrazzi, the leading Turkish Web 2.0 blog), so I interviewed him about the announcement.
I recently tried Ning for a fun community I wanted to build. The user experience was a complete disaster and half of the service didn’t work. Maybe this will be a better solution.
ning has a great head start and truly profound leadership. should be an interesting venture to observe and use…..
Most people won’t even know what’s going on no matter what legal disclaimer they are asked to click on. Consequences are something people like to ignore.
We’re building our site in our free time, and it only moderately integrates with FB and other SNs. Only so the utility of our service can be leveraged no matter where are users are. we don’t really care what else they are doing.
Being dishonest and disingenuous are different, and we plan to do neither. Look out for your users and leave some money on the table, and you will find success.
This really kills me. I’ve tried Grou.ps on a few different occasions and both times I find it confusing and it doesn’t even come close to competing with ning or wetpaint. How do they get financing??? Unreal!
is it me or does all tech guys looks the same
where is the source code just found some links for some php code there but the links are broken
also are the open sourcing the entire platform or just a few components??
Simply awesome. Is this the start of Integrated Community Ware (ICW) , that combined Wiki, Forum, blog, photo etc into one integrated service that able to cross link each other with ease ?
Grou.ps is much more than Ning because I can see that Grou.ps appeal to business and company who like to use Web 2.0 technology to engage the customer or staff. The design is less fanciful than those of social Web 2.0 which is good.
Ning’s purpose tend to focus more on social web 2.0 community etc music, video, user-generated content.
Grou.ps could start jumpstart the trend on ICW..
Congrats on raising the money. I’m sure this will enlarge the market for all of us. Great work.
Mike, thanks for this coverage!
In response to some comments here; our source code can be reached from http://code.google.com/p/groudotps - we’ve only opened forum and wiki modules for now, but more to come, you’ll be able to get the exact same Grou.ps infrastructure on your own server very soon. We really believe in the power of open source, and need for commoditization of platforms. Note that current version is still under review, that’s why it currently resides on SVN - production ready snapshots will be ready in less than a month.
Also, let me shamelessly add this: http://docs.google.com/Present.....1ch2hbn3r# - this is my presentation at the Webrazzi - Techcrunch event. It’s too implicit, requires my explanation. Basically I mention our new modules (Files, Videos, ..) new templates (more than 20, they are nice, check out) and new languages (Hebrew, Greek, German, Spanish, Swedish…. all by volunteers) - also tell that we are the first and only one who offer “no topbar” - which means 0 branding - your site is completely yours, yet another Grou.ps premiere.
I am bootstrapping a collaboration site at the moment that is also focused around the idea of allowing users to create ad hoc groups. I am not open sourcing my platform though, the technology is not your “wrote it in 3 weeks” type of code that can’t scale that you find coming out of all these new 2.0 start ups. I haven’t looked at grou.ps yet but if they are giving the code away there may not be much compelling advantage in that code to KEEP it proprietary…this is a major weakness of this approach. If you go open, then any joe can use your code to build something better than you and hammer you to death with it. The old maxim of innovating to build a sustainable competitive advantage is something that seems to be collectively forgotten every 10 years….amazing.
Sharing will never end and of course congregating is a must! Grou.ps has a catchy name for early adopters. We all see that there is a big community market; also grou.ps will have a belle place after ning - and in 8-12 months will disturb ning because of the end users’ gossips like “we have money heheh how is you?!” After that big ning ones may move to grou.ps for some cash! I can imagine a group name: givememoney.ning or gro.ps/WeGotIt ; )
Source (or rather broken links and promises) at rather hard to find (not the “open source” link in the grou.ps footer) http://grou.ps/groudotps/wiki/9688
Interesting announcement anyway. I’m sure lots of web companies will open source some or all of their core code for a number of pragmatic reasons (Sokullu more or less says to lower hiring costs in the video interview above).
interesting concept. who knew?
http://www.GroupsLocator.com
Shit, working outside in the sun, I commented on the wrong post.
@killerlocator
Dude, give it up. We’re not just saying “lovator” sites is dumb ’cause were jealous and don’t get the web ecosystem like you do. We’re trying to help you. Stop, no more ——locator domains. Well, unless you got time and $ to burn.
They really ought to spend some time/money on a better domain name than “grou.ps”. That’ll kill them no matter how good the product or how much money they raise.
fire nice
modernday grou.ps
I am a Ning fan myself. Not sure of Grou.ps will do it for me or not. Ning’s app seems pretty powerful AND it has allot of users already on the site. Plus the “universal sign in” method that allows users to go between hosted NING sites really means allot.
A few big names already use the site as their home and customize it as such to make it look as if it is a stand alone site (complete with full URL) but its rear end is NING. The site owner can choose the level of interaction she wants with already establish NING community members. The interaction potential is very high and it has been something I have been waiting years for (now if someone would just specialize and do this just for bloggers, that would be great… so far no major blog hosting/community site goes to this level of interaction).
Heck, even I’m thinking of building a website(s) on their platform and hope to even create a few applications using their API’s (if they allow that… not sure they do yet)
I wonder if NING see the potential to use their app for creating knowledge systems for businesses and municipalities? If they do, i think the skies the limit for them (but keep in mind that the sky has its limits lol)
Anyway, if Grou.ps can do all the same things, them maybe we have a competition going, but I don’t see it yet.
The open source links are all fake. I get the error message “We’re sorry, but something went wrong.” more often than not. It look a lot like a phishing site.
We want to see more smart projects like Grou.ps. Emre Sokullu: Congratulations.
If grou.ps doesn´t take money and doesn´t show their own ads and give away the software - HOW do they make money?
“If grou.ps doesn´t take money and doesn´t show their own ads and give away the software - HOW do they make money?”
How does Wordpress make money ? Perhaps we take that clue from Wordpress. Wordpress.com gives away source code, doesn’t put app but yet still maintain its business. It is building a brand which can leverage on partnership etc… and the strong brand attract investment.
Maybe grou.ps is adopting the same strategy.
frank you need to come out of the closet and show us your substance. stop shadow dancing.
if you have “anything” to compete with da killa you let me know. idiot.
yes Dave, there domain is a death sentence.
Well cool I will have to keep an eye on this, I can prob use on my site.