Yahoo issued clarifications today regarding password security and third-party websites. Grouply welcomes these clarifications from Yahoo, as they reaffirm Grouply’s compliance with Yahoo’s Terms of Service and Groups Guidelines.

Yahoo acknowledges that it is not a TOS violation to provide your Yahoo password to a third-party site like Grouply. In fact, millions of users have provided their Yahoo passwords to third-party sites like Meebo, the instant messaging aggregator, and to wireless carriers such as T-Mobile so that they can read their Yahoo Mail on a mobile device. Providing your password to a third party site does carry risks, however, and users are advised to exercise caution when doing so.

Grouply uses your Yahoo password to collect your group list and group messages from the Yahoo Groups website. We do not use it to collect your photos, files, databases or any other group content, and we do not use it to access your Yahoo Mail or any other Yahoo service. When Yahoo provides an API for Yahoo Groups, which we understand is being worked on, then Grouply will no longer ask users to provide their Yahoo password.

Grouply protects your Yahoo password. Your password is encrypted and is accessible only by the Grouply application, not directly by a human. Grouply has been certified by TRUSTe, a leading advocate for consumer internet privacy. Click here for more on how Grouply protects your Yahoo password.

Grouply provides a number of features for group owners such as an automatic group newsletter, group statistics, most popular topics, and other interesting summaries. Grouply Social helps build community in the group. Grouply’s time-saving features like the Smart Digest improve member satisifaction. However, Grouply respects the right of a group owner to determine whether Grouply is suitable for her group. Grouply recently released Grouply Owner Controls to give group owners the ability to block their group from Grouply in less than a minute and without providing any personal information.

Grouply understands the privacy of group messages and incorporates strict controls to ensure that privacy is maintained. Third-party websites like Gmail and inbox.com include controls to ensure that the Yahoo Groups messages you forward to them are not available to other users. Similarly, Grouply prevents other users from seeing your group messages. To see a group’s messages in Grouply, you must be a member of the group. You cannot see any messages in Grouply that you couldn’t see when logged in to the Yahoo Groups website. Click here for more on how Grouply protects your group messages.

We at Grouply look forward to continuing to serve our users and improving the Grouply service.

UPDATE: We are pleased to report that you can now use Grouply without providing your Yahoo password!

One week ago today we announced that we would deliver a suite of controls for group owners to manage their groups in Grouply. I am pleased to announce that the first Grouply Owner Controls are now available.

With Grouply Owner Controls, group owners can control whether members can use Grouply’s Invite My Group feature. They can also block their group from using Grouply entirely if they want. Grouply Owner Controls are accessible whether or not your group is already in Grouply.

Each group has a “dashboard” where the group owner can make selections. Group owners do not need to register with Grouply or submit any personal information to access the dashboard. Instead, the owner goes to the Grouply Owner Controls start page and enters her group name. An owner authorization code (OAC) is then sent to her groupname-owner@yahoogroups.com email address. The group owner uses the code to access the owner dashboard for her group. The whole process takes less than a minute, and all selections are reversible; just revisit your group’s dashboard to make changes.

When an owner blocks her group, the group disappears entirely from Grouply. No group messages are accessible by anyone, and the group name will no longer display. All group members in Grouply are sent an email notifying them of the change. Group members who join Grouply in the future will not be able to use Grouply for the group. Here is an example of what group members see for a blocked group on the Update Group Access page in Grouply.

We would like to thank the members and moderators of GrouplyImprovements for helping design this first release of Grouply Owner Controls. GrouplyImprovements is an independently run group created by moderators from EmailList-Managers, Group Managers Forum, ListHelp, and Yahoo Group of Groups — the four most highly regarded “groups about Yahoo Groups” in existence.

We are now collecting requirements for follow-on Owner Controls features including the Owner Newsletter, a weekly email for group owners including useful statistics about your group. The Owner Newsletter feature is being discussed and developed in GrouplyImprovements. Join GrouplyImprovements today and make your voice heard!

If you encounter any issues using Grouply Owner Controls or have any suggestions, please contact us at support@grouply.com .

This has certainly been an eventful few days for us here at Grouply. The good news is that we experienced a huge surge in our user base. The bad news is that some of our new users got upset quickly and left. How did this happen?

First some background. Like all social sites, Grouply offers templates to assist users with inviting their friends to join. Grouply, as you would expect, offers an “Invite My Group” feature that allows a user to post a message to one or more of her groups about Grouply. It’s really little more than a box with some editable default text, plus some check boxes to indicate which groups you want to send to. Pretty simple. Too simple, as it turns out.

For some reason, on Super Bowl Sunday when they should have been watching football, a number of Grouply users decided it was a good time to start inviting all their groups to Grouply. And then the new Grouply users invited all their groups, including the original groups. And so on. You see where this is going? Some groups wound up getting “hit” over and over with the same invitation, and the next thing we know, Grouply was labeled a spammer. We want you to love Grouply, and now people think we’re a spammer. Nobody loves a spammer. Nobody.

We screwed up, and we suffered for it. Bigtime. Grouply has been knocked down and dragged around on message boards and our own beloved Yahoo Groups all over the place – from knitting groups in Canada, to school groups in Australia, to graphics groups in Germany, and adult groups the world over. And it hurt. The virality of the internet giveth and it taketh away.

In between taking hits, we also managed to fix a few things. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

1. Restricted “Invite My Group”
If a group has already been invited to Grouply, why invite them again? Why, indeed. Well now you can’t. As of Monday, we disabled the Invite My Group feature for any group that was invited to Grouply in the previous 30 days. So you should no longer be seeing multiple Grouply invites in a group. If you do, then it’s a bug, and you should let us know about it at support@grouply.com .

2. Self-Service Delete
After seeing all the Grouply invitations, a number of users were understandably concerned about this “Grouply thing” and wanted out. Although they could “disconnect” their Groups from within Grouply, they wanted their accounts to be wiped from our system with all data erased. And unfortunately Grouply didn’t yet have this capability. So the process was for them to email us, and for us to delete them one by one. Needless to say, we spent several very late nights handling the requests, and our users had to wait far too long for confirmation that everything was taken care of. I am happy to report that we have added a feature where you can delete your account yourself, right from within Grouply. You can get immediate results … and we can get some sleep.

3. List Owner Controls
Some group owners, seeing all the Grouply invites flying around, felt as though their group had been “hijacked”. This soured them on the whole Grouply idea, and now, unfortunately, Grouply has been banned from a few groups. Again, not a great situation to be in for a company whose goal is to be loved. “Banned” doesn’t equal “loved” in any language I’m aware of.

We are now working with some list owners to develop the first of what we hope to be many owner controls for Grouply. Group owners will be able to decide if they want their group to be accessible in Grouply at all. They will also be able to disable the Invite My Group button for their group if that’s not the sort of thing their group allows. We expect to introduce these owner control features into Grouply in the next few days.

So that’s where we are. We blew it on Super Bowl Sunday, got to work fixing things by the fourth quarter, and now four days later we are on the road to recovery (knock on wood). Not bad for an internet company, right? And we’ll keep listening – because we’re not done yet. So please continue to send your comments and suggestions to feedback@grouply.com or to me directly at mark@grouply.com .

For those of you who stuck with us, we thank you for your patience and understanding. For those who left, there are no hard feelings whatsoever on our end, and we hope to see you back again on Grouply whenever you’re comfortable with returning. If you have any questions about Grouply or our security or privacy policies, please check out our FAQ page.

So long for now.

Mark
Co-founder/CEO, Grouply

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UPDATE: Several owners and moderators from ListHelp, EmailList-Managers (ELM), and Yahoo Group of Groups (YGOG), and GroupManagersForum (GMF) have created a new group called GrouplyImprovements where Grouply management is working with group owners to resolve outstanding issues and develop new Grouply features.  We are posting regularly to GrouplyImprovements with progress updates.  You can join GrouplyImprovements here.