DISQUS

PaulSweeney · 2 years ago

There are a lot of "group applications" out there, and now tools for building social networks can be pretty easily mashed. Maps, Presence, docs, email, IM.... perhaps this might be termed "light-weight" group collaboration.... each vertical is likely to have its own spin on what's needed specifically for them. What's your take?

Scott Annan · 2 years ago

Nic,

I would be interested to get your feedback on our application: Web Groups. It aims at the heart of your comments.

www.mercurygrove.com

Martin Owen · 2 years ago

As an early adopter I used to maintain FirstClass servers in the early 90's for my research partners and my students. FC had so much of the functionality of two-point-oh! Genericly we used to call to call this stuff groupware and in academic terms the domain was computer-supported-collaborative-working (CSCW). FC still seems to offer a lot. I had a world wide usage of 1500 - and virtually no unautomated maintenance. Users had rights to configure their own environments and set up "conferences" ie collaborativework-groups around a subject within a couple of clicks. Pretty formating, embedding quicktime, audio messaging, poking, twittering, reception on your mobile phone, sending from your mobile phone..... it was (and still is) all there.

nic · 2 years ago

Thanks guys.

Paul - what I am wondering is if the group management functionality can be/should be abstracted from the other elements of collaboration you list. Different verticals will have different requirements, and I guess the other big question re this as an opportunity around which to build a company, is whether the differences are small enough that you can serve them all with the same basic product.

PaulSweeney · 2 years ago

Maybe facebook has some interesting lessons to teach us all about what people want from a group and what the "data inside" looks like. i.e. it groups information and reports it at one time, it prioritises information that is "close to you", and it gives you "a view" on information that is tertiary to you (friends you kinda know, who if they were doing something where their might be benefit in putting out a "stay alive" message (in networking terms, you ping them!). From a telecommunications point of view we want to see our exposure to others as "faceted", and we want our information, attention and interruption flows to be faceted to each facet of the group, and in a way, this is like the iLike application: by knowing what we all like, or declare, we can begin to facet the information flows. I cant think of any value in "groups" or "grouping" as a term, unless you are thinking of porting a Group from platform to platform, as one might port an individual identity, as per OpenID. GroupID anyone?

nic · 2 years ago

In your example Facebook and ILike are applications that individual groups might use to govern their activity. Others are home grown sites like Slashdot or Digg. I am talking about software which could provide common functionality across all these platforms.

PaulSweeney · 2 years ago

Ok. I get where you are coming from.

Roth · 2 years ago

Are you only concerned with group collaboration tools for enterprise or across all mediums i.e. social sites? What do you think about group collaboration as a means to increase openness between social sites and engagement of the audiences to use these sites? There has been a good deal of thought lately on the social graph and portability. What do you think about using groups to increase portability or interoperability through positioning between/as a hub to the larger social sites. So using collaboration tools to bring users together for productivity in any terms.

nic · 2 years ago

I think the distinction between social sites and enterprise use is disappearing - take a look at the widespread corporate use of Facebook.

Most users of social sites are members of multiple overlapping groups though, which makes it difficult to see how the groups themselves will help portability. If I go with one group from Facebook to Bebo then by default I have to leave all the other groups I'm a member of.

Roth · 2 years ago

nic,

I see what you are saying. I've been giving both of these issues a lot of thought lately and have been trying to work out a solution to more interactive online networking and social portability. I think the two can go hand in hand when we talk about bringing together networks and managing those networks.

I feel that the answer lies in a platform to foster more social interaction online through groups of aggregated social users from around the web. So that, a MySpace user, Facebook user and Bebo user could all interact together on the platform that sits independently by parsing their data and bundling it into a neat packet. They could then use that online ID packet to interact in the personal group setting.

Therefore you are creating a platform for openness and also for creating and managing dynamic groups. Do you have any thoughts on that approach?