CollectiveX competitors

Sounds good. I'd be interested in hearing your views regarding the positives and negatives of the service or any other group oriented services that you run across.

I just took a look at Nexo The fine print says it was launched in January, and is marked as a Beta. They have some excellent testimonials, but the demo videos weren't working, and the sample groups to join were inventions, not real groups. It seems that their target market is small groups -- sports teams, fraternities, family circles, etc.There is no suggestion that it can serve as a corporate intranet. The site is also copy-dense, badly formatted and with few graphics. Not very appealing, although many of their functions seems to overlap ours.

@Jonathan - Can you provide a breif analysis of any other the competitors that you listed? Your likes/dislikes relative to CollectiveX?

FYI
Marzar, the social media platform for business......

Don't forget a very well established site called Meetup.com, didn't see anyone list it above.

I'd say Meetup is the closest and biggest competitor to CollectiveX Groupsite. Software is really polished and bug free, also has tremendous amount of groups and members. They're now venturing into the social networking aspect of their groups. Take a look.

jake

just came across "www.sosius.com":http://www.sosius.com

In comparing many of the more recent competitors such as Sosius and Marzar... what are your thoughts? I notice that those platforms take a User-centric approach versus the Group-centric approach that CollectiveX Groupsites employ. Example - when you create a Groupsite... the group is in the forefront and your account is a subset thereof. With many of the newer "competitors," I'm noticing that whe I care an account, it puts me first versus the group. I guess that aproach works for some. What are your thoughts?

Regards,
Clarence

a friend and I explored sosius the other day as we thought it might make a good informal intranet for our colleagues at work (the formal intranet doesnt really do much). The user-centric approach assumes that you will use the site for all the different projects that you are involved with. This is a false assumption in my book as it is a small percentage of people who opt to use a single program to manage all of their projects. The group-centric approach at Cx is far better in my opinion, especially for the people that are in my group. They are minimal users of the program but enjoy being part of the group and being informed of what is going on.

For people who are looking for a complex and detailed project management program, sosius is definitely an option. They have literally packed it full of features, so much so that even I struggle to comprehend it all. Generally I have preferred simple programs (i do my project management through Goplan, which is bare bones).

I support Cx's use of both the group-centric approach and the usability over excessive features approach.

Gareth,

Thanks for...
"I support Cx’s use of both the group-centric approach and the usability over excessive features approach."
... we appreciate your support.

We will always be group-centric but we definately have plans for more features. However, we will add features in a way that doesn't make the user-experience more complex or confusing. Some features will be core (free of change) and others will be premium upgrades. After we complete our Ad control option over the next two weeks (included with the removal or advertising premium feature), we intend to add a message center (including blogs and internal mail); tagging for targeting blasts to specific group members (and setting access levels); a more flexible (customizable) summary page; and potentially wikis and document management (as future premium upgrades). We'll also be supporting multi languanages and a larger layout option in the not too distant future.

So stay tuned! More features are in store ;-)

Clarence

The below communication is a difference between CollectiveX and Socius:

Dear Jonathan,

Sosius: Get It Together

Note that they sent a communication to me, offered me a contact person etc.

The real questions are really what does CollectiveX want to be, and more importantly what does it NOT want to be? I am not talking about simple versus complex, as I dont know anyone who wants to be complex. I am talking about what are the types of people/groups that CollectiveX is after, what does CollectiveX do for them, how is it so uniquely suited to do it best, and then how does CollectiveX help these people/groups grow a strong network that can generate revenue?

Socius has essentially told me "here is your contact, now how can we help you build your group"

My take on the introduction side of things is:

1) Sosius have done well with their documentation and help stuff
2) The introduction email is a nice follow-up. Whether it translates into service I dont know.
3) When I invite new people to my group, I would love to be able to provide some kind of documentation (e.g., pdf) that outlines how to interact with the site. They could print it off, have a quick read and keep it near the computer for when they feel like interacting with the site. (my group are still very paper oriented)
4) I made up my own "welcome to the group" email that i send whenever a new person signs up, hoping to make them feel like their sign-up is important and they can start using the site straight away.

Marzar sent me access this weekend after sending me an email apoligizing for sending me an email that had bad links which I never received. The login did not activate my account, or if it did I couldnt get in anyway. Then they sent me an email regarding the cost of use after a trial period. These guys are finished.