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Grouply Revisted: ETA on Google Groups Support

You just have to love the power of Web 2.0. It lets you connect with your customers/users on an extremely personal level. Yesterday, I made a post about Grouply’s lack or support for Google Groups. Today, I received an email from Mark Robins, Co-Founder/CEO of Grouply.

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how he came across my post. According to Robins, “support for Google Groups will be available before the end of the year.” That is good news for anyone who is a member of both Yahoo and Google groups. With support for both services in place, Grouply can be extremely beneficial and time saving.

Robins provided a good real life example for us all. Connecting with customers and users is what seperates the Web 2.0 community from the brick and mortar or bricks and clicks communities. In Web 2.0, we can connect with people instantly and often. When customers know that their opinion matters to you, they will take a more vested interest in your product or service.

Grouply: Not yet ready for prime time

This is just my humble opinion, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the world does not need another social network. If I what to tell people what I’m doing, I have enough sites to help me make that happen. I really don’t need another one.

The other day someone sent me an email about Grouply. This site touts itself as the site where you can manage “All your Yahoo and Google groups in one place.” My first thought was that this is a pretty interesting idea. Yahoo and Google groups are pretty decent places to network with other people and blast your ads. Having one site to manage all my groups would save me a ton of time.

I decided to give Grouply a try. After 10 seconds on the site I found one major flaw. I saw a message that had me completely scratching my head. “Support for Google Groups is coming soon!” Well, unless I’m mistaken isn’t the premise of the whole site supposed to be about managing both Yahoo and Google groups?

So, without support for Google groups, you are left with a glorified version of Yahoo groups. If Yahoo Groups married your favorite social network site, their love child would be Grouply. You can do all of the conventional things like make friends and update your status.

Grouply does have some promise, but without the addition of Google Groups, it is useless. I’m sure there is a logical reason why the creators launched the site without Google Groups support. I don’t have any idea what that reason is, but I’m hoping it is a good one for their sake.

So, here’s my final take on Grouply. For right now, don’t waste your time. There are other ways to connect, spam people (I mean advertise) and stay in touch with friends. Once Grouply figures out the whole Google Groups support dilemna, the site will have a lot more usefulness.