Grou.ps - Seamless Integration

These days, you can share just about every aspect of your life online, whether it be your last vacation to Tunisia on Facebook or travel tips on FlyerTalk, or even the recurring nightmare you had last night on Myspace. There are plenty of outlets to get your every hopes, fears, and ideas out there in public. Unfortunately, the whole process isn’t very streamlined. There is no single site where you can collaborate or share with all the tools available today—wikis, blogs, forums, bookmarking,chat etc. Unless you’ve got a dirty hack this is nearly impossible to accomplish. Which is what the new collaboration site Grou.ps hopes to change. Grou.ps is one-stop shopping for online collaboration. It simplifies the integration process. Each group gets their own site with a single login and all the tools and modules to allow users to integrate content from third party apps like flickr or Blogger.It’s currently in beta and is free to use.

“Our purpose is to solve the "stay in touch" problem of social groups. Are you still in communication with your high school friends. Are you aware of what your old best friends are doing right now or where they are... Are you satisfied with your current alumni mailing list, is it enough for your self-expression needs? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a home for your group and connect with your friends via blogs and know as much as possible or as much as you want.”

Grou.ps is an incredibly simple and smart idea. It makes integration seamless. All the usual suspects in blogging, photo and forums are available to use. You just require a single login.

Will Grou.ps be able to compete with Google or Zoho? Will users in the United States find it as appealing as users in Chile? What’s the business model?