CollectiveX competitors

Guys,

Thanks for the positive words. Expect good things next quarter from Groupsite. We are at the point where we will be adding new features. Features that move us more toward "social collaboration."  I won't say what they are yet, but do know that we are working to make high quality enhancements to Groupsites.

Clarence

Being a bit cagey on the new features huh Clarence

Its good to hear that there are some movements afoot - the social collaboration space is pretty interesting nowadays as well, especially with things like Office Live launching with tools for collaborative document development. 

Nice also to know the Vision and Technology Roadmap for Groupsite going forward.Yes / No ?

We are building Business Model(s) around this and Investing in Customized Features as Add-Ons and Interfacing with Other sites etc. The More Options and customization i believe the better for Groupsite and the more you can have the availability to connect, share and tie in to other Social Media Sites, Feeds, Blogs etc etc the better.

The Changes made last week kind of changed a few things for us and so we are scrambling to make some of these Widgets etc work like before but is not the same. It is not easy to plan forward if there are going to be changes made unexpectedly.

Our Goals are Lofty. Help us get there.

Mike

I have been looking into SocialGo (http://www.socialgo.com/), they seem to have a lot of good features and have been building the platform quite a bit over the past few months.  Pricing is good as well, for the same price, I believe you get unlimited users, and no branding of any kind.  I like that.

I will check out + let you know my thoughts

Mike

Another alternative that I saw in the recent years is http://www.grouply.com.  This has some interesting features and the premium plans are quite reasonable with an option of Ad-Free and White label. But, personally I feel that Groupsite has a more professional look.

Recently heard about http://www.bigtent.com as well, but haven't looked into it.

The reason that we provide open forums within Champions to discuss topics such as this publicly is because we stand by our product 100% and are confident in how we measure up against any competitor.  Our focus isn't to compete with every competitor on a feature-by-feature basis but on overall user-experience which includes: service reliability, customer support, enterprise security and a continued focus on professional consumers (prosumers).

Many of our more recent platform enhancements have been tailored towards the needs of our larger enterprise-wide GroupsitePro mega customers. However, several new features and enhancements including: Groupsite Mobile, Subgroup Member Assign, and more are currently in development and are forthcoming soon.

We value you as customers and remain transparent. 

Sincerely,

Clarence Wooten, Founder & CEO

Thanks Clarence

We appreciate the fact that we can discuss this stuff openly. It makes sense that your improvements have focused on the bigger groups, that is where the money is. 

Big tent does look interesting, especially the ability to coordinate paid memberships through credit card and paypal. That would be a very neat feature for us, especially if we could charge online for upcoming events that we run as part of our group.

SubGroup Member assign will be very welcome , can't wait for that. Anymore insite or info / technology road map to share about Groupsite Mobile ?

Mike

Guys,

I would love to provide details on what we are working on and planning to work on. However, I'm cautioned by my team against doing so.  Our priorities sometime change weekly due to the demands of running a platform that supports the needs of tens of thousands of Groupsites as well as continuous optimization of our business model in supporting two different group segments:

Segment A: Social Networking oriented groups

Segment B: Collaboration oriented groups.

"Segment A" is typically looking to monetize their community (make money). Thus requiring features such as ecommerce etc. Which we WILL add.

"Segment B" is looking to leverage Groupsites to (save money). Thus requiring features that are more geared toward security and collaboration -- Think Microsoft Sharepoint.

We value both segments and are committed to serving the needs of each.

Segment A typically brings more users to our platform thus serves as our primary marketing engine by introducing new people to the power of Groupsites.

Segment B typically drives revenue from larger organizations that require the deployment, and management, of hundreds of Groupsites across their association or organization in support of various teams, workgroups and outreach initiatives.

Because we are committed to supporting both segments, and most importantly are committed to being a self-sufficient (profitable) enterprise, we are sometimes faced prioritizing the needs of one segment over the other. Segment A is our primary marketing force; where Segment B is our primary revenue force. 

The good news is that this dual focus is leading Groupsite into a very healthy place as a company and it's helping to evolve Groupsite into a platform that will truly define "social collaboration." Our hybrid feature set, coupled with our user-experience focus around the needs of business and organizational professionals, will continue to make Groupsites "the place to be" for professional groups that make things happen.

During the past 12 months, we've primarily been focused on improving our company and platform infrastructure. During the next 12 months, expect more emphasis on feature development for both of our valued segments. The fact that we are focused on adding these features to a single product (i.e. Groupsites), we are starting to evolve into a unique platform that brings "community" to collaboration -- equally serving the needs of groups small and very large.

For those of you who are long-time Groupsite users/managers -- we thank you for taking this ride with us and look forward to the future.

Hopefully this provides some insight into the development of Groupsite.com as a company and as a platform.

Sincerely,

Clarence Wooten - Founder & CEO

Why not enable google's collaboration tools (mainly talkin' bout google docs here), but also their shared web albums, instead of trying to develop your own?  Many of us are already using google docs and don't want a separate and segregated platform.

Evan Specter

developing a groupsite for independent schools

that makes sense to me. I am already a big fan of google's collaboration tools. 

Well, Nexo didn't last long, did it?

Evan,

I don't disagree with you. The question is, can we integrate Google Docs into our user-interface and do it in a way that creates a seamless user-experience.  Have you seen other sites do this type of integration?