Probably the most challenging thing for a start-up is focus. We certainly are not much different, especially as the solution is very broad. Many well funded companies have failed in trying to solve the same problem.

The prize is very alluring, email is the most used service on the web today and yet it has not matured over the years.

The web service we built, grouptivity, is very functional and solves many of the problems noted in email. Gartner published a white paper in December 2006, Deploy E-mail Distribution Lists and Discussion Forums Together, Not in Isolation, by Nikos Drakos. This totally validates the direction we have taken with Grouptivity.

Grouptivity, is very horizontal, almost as broad as email. Therin lies the problem, jack of all trades, master of none. So we decided to find one use that was underserved and had high enough value. After some exhaustive research, which by the way is documented on the previous post, we decided to focus on, sharing, but more importantly, discussing web content. The ability to take something of interest an instantly start a private discussion of that web content.

So a user can put download the “discuss” link onto their browser. As they are surfing the web and find something of interest they’d like to discuss with their friends/family/colleagues they can click on the link. This will pull the content, images and rich content (videos, music, etc) into a page where they can select what pieces they want to include in their message. Once the selection has been made they press continue, add the email addresses, any additional comments and hit send. An instant private discussion forum has been created on that content.

Secondly, we’re also releasing some code that will allow web publishers to embed simialr functionality directly onto their site. So their visitors can also initiate, instant private discussions (IPD) on their web content. Allowing distribution of their web content to their visitors extended network. 

Try it out and let us know what you think. We’ve done some exhaustive testing, but till you out it out in the real world, with all the different browsers, OS, etc you don’t know how robust it is. Suggestions, features are very welcome, don’t be shy.