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.

The news may overflow with stories about the social networking giants, such as Facebook and MySpace, but a horde of companies are doing their best to reduce the fundamental features of these websites to mere commodities. These up-and-coming companies provide so-called “white label” social networking platforms that enable their customers to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor those networks to a range of purposes.

The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social network’s users and to brand the network with the builder’s identity or intent. While definitions of “social networking” may vary, social networks are primarily defined by member profiles and some sort of user generated content.

There are roughly three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking. The first provides hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point and click their way to a brand new social network. Companies of this type interact minimally with their customers and rather focus on providing the network-building tools that they demand.

We have taken a sample of nine of these companies – Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack, and ONEsite – all of which provide free baseline services, and reviewed them individually below. We have also included the chart on the right summarizing all of these companies’ offerings. Credit for initial research into these companies goes to Jeremiah Owyang who compiled a comprehensive list of white label social networking services.

The second type of company provides social networking software for download and installation onto one’s server. The third type works very closely with clients to build a social network based on their needs. These companies might suite your needs much better than any do-it-yourself social networking service, so you may want to check out companies such as Social Platform (a personalized service) or phpFox (a downloadable solution). We’ll take a deeper look at these services in Part 2 of this post.

Out of the services that we review below, we found that Ning provides the best platform for setting up good-looking, sophisticated social networks with minimal effort. KickApps provides the best platform for integrating social networking components into existing websites. CrowdVine and Haystack are viable options for organizations that are looking for simple social networks to improve personalized communication online. CollectiveX is most suitable for existing groups that want to collaborate online. And GoingOn provides a promising hybrid solution with capabilities shared by both Ning and KickApps.

More details on each are below.

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CollectiveX, the group-focused professional social network founded by Clarence Wooten, will launch early Thursday morning.

The focus of CollectiveX is on the group, not the individual. Members of the group can interact via file sharing, messaging, calendaring and exchange of leads/contacts. It frankly answers to question that many social networks pose: Ok, we’re here, now what do we do? With CollectiveX, the entire point is to facilitate interactions among existing groups. As a member, you can be a part of as many groups as you like: boards, company teams, charities, whatever. For additional information, see my last post on CollectiveX, when it was just entering private beta. As I said before, CollectiveX is what LinkedIn should have been.

Screen Shots:

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CollectiveX, a startup founded by repeat entrepreneur and venture capitalist Clarence Wooten, has the chance to disrupt Linkedin.

I gave a teaser about CollectiveX back in November of last year. I can disclose a little more about the service and its features now, although they will not let me post any screen shots other than the one shown below.

CollectiveX is Linkedin the way it should have been done in the first place. The interface to create your bio is question and answer based with nice ajax features. The result is a professional looking and easy to peruse bio. CollectiveX also has advanced calendar, message board,file storage and other features.

But the biggest difference between CollectiveX and Linkedin is that CollectiveX is completely group-focused. You must be associated with at least one group to join and all of the activity focuses on your groups. This makes a lot of sense – groups will form (each with its own subdomain) virally as members start new groups.

For instance, a board of directors group might use CollectiveX to coordinate board meetings via the calendar, upload board minutes for review, and use the discussion board to plan future meetings or follow up on action items. One of the board members may set up a separte group for her church group or charity organization and invite others to join. And so on.

CollectiveX also leverages contacts in a much more intelligent way than Linkedin. Everyone you know is not linked to you. Instead, you choose which contacts you want to share with each group.

The revenue model makes sense. Groups of less than ten people are free. Over ten and you pay a small fee.

This is a winner. I think David Hornik may agree that this is a “Social Network 3.0″.

Sign up for the beta here, which will be coming within a couple of weeks.

CollectiveX, a new venture backed by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Clarence Wooten, has put up a landing page and is taking requests for people interested in taking part in their early 2006 beta.

I’ve known Clarence for years (I used to be his attorney), and I’ve heard his ideas for CollectiveX. It’s going to be an awesome web application for communicating with and managing your relationships with groups of people that you are affiliated with.