Columbia, MD based CollectiveX has released a major UI and feature updates to their popular group sites. Groupsites are
a new class of websites that empower people to come together and make things happen. Groupsites are powered by CollectiveX and combine the most useful features of traditional websites, blogs, collaboration software and social networks.
Groupsites are great places to create a meeting place for any organization, big or small. They offer an impressive amount of features on a freemium model. Features include
- discussion forums
- group blogs
- email blasts
- file storage
- member profiles
and many may more with extra features, like branding, for varying prices. Take a look at the following video for a great overview of the services.
Groupsites by CollectiveX – Quick Tour – September 2008 from Clarence Wooten on Vimeo.
Mike Arrington had a good write up on the site and really seems to have some good things to say about Groupsites
Here’s why I like CollectiveX: It serves a need that a lot of small and medium sized organizations really have. A place to keep themselves organized online, share contact information (and contacts for introductions), and generally get their work done.
Once a user joins with a group, they can add any other group to their profile. That means the service can grow virally. If someone gets sucked into a charitable organization where they donate time or money, they may soon see the value in using it at work, or for their kid’s soccer team. That sucks in other users over time.
The service is still relatively small with 18,000 groups. But 8% of those groups eventually start to buy premium features, says Wooten, and the company is near break even. CollectiveX isn’t the sexiest startup we’ve covered, but it uses a lot of the really cool collaboration features we see on the more fluffy sites to really help groups get organized.
I took a few minutes to set up a group site for East Coast Blogging, and it could not have been easier. As I said, the featureset is quite impressive and will work great for almost any size group. So head on over and join our group and we will see how we can make it grow.
