In earlier posts here and here we discussed some of the frustrations that group owners have felt in using Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, and other systems to help run their mothers clubs, alumni associations, elementary schools, book clubs, and discussion groups.  Turns out these group systems aren’t optimal for group members, either.  In this post we will present the major pain points reported by group members, and we will highlight how Grouply’s understanding of your real-time interests enables a better, more personalized user experience.

Group member pain points

At Grouply, we have surveyed and interviewed hundreds of users across dozens of online group systems (e.g., Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Ning, Facebook) about what they like and don’t like.  The top two “pain points” reported by group members are:

• Information overload – Some people receive hundreds of messages a day across all their groups, making it impossible to keep up.
• Limited recommendations – Nothing is done to help members discover new groups, friends, or content.

Grouply addresses these issues by tracking the real-time interests of our users and using that information to help filter messages and recommend groups, people, and content.

Tracking real-time interests

How does Grouply track your interests?  Let’s look at a typical user.  Abby Burns is a 30-year old mother of two.  She loves American Idol, golf, wine tasting, cooking, and being a mom.  Abby uses Grouply to engage in her passions through her online groups, and in so doing, she is expressing her real-time interests in various topics:

• She joins a new golf discussion group – interest in golf
• She posts a message to her wine tasting club about Pinot noir – interest in wine in general and Pinot noir in particular
• She reads, bookmarks, or searches for messages on preschools in her mothers club – interest in preschools

Since Grouply tracks and remembers all these activities, Grouply understands how Abby’s interests fluctuate over time.  In January, for example, Abby posts and reads far more messages in her American Idol fan club than in her golf group, indicating a much stronger interest in American Idol at that time.  And this makes complete sense, since the new AI season is just getting underway in January but the golf links are still closed!

Grouply tracks user interests over time

Grouply uses what it knows about Abby’s real-time interests to improve her experience in Grouply.  Let’s see how.

“Smart filters” combat information overload

Each day in her inbox, Abby receives a Grouply Smart Digest email – a personalized summary of all the activities that have occurred across all of her groups in the last 24 hours.  The Smart Digest highlights what’s interesting to Abby and hides what’s not, allowing her to keep up with her groups in much less time.  For example, Grouply knows that Abby recently read a posting about preschools in her mothers club, so Abby’s Smart Digest emphasizes the new comment that was just posted to that same thread.  Grouply also knows that Abby has ignored several other recent conversations in that group, so when new comments are posted to those threads, they are hidden from Abby by default.

The Smart Digest highlights what’s interesting to you and hides what’s not

Grouply provides Abby a number of other “smart filters” that help her quickly focus on the few messages she is likely to be interested in among the hundreds that get posted to her groups each day:

• Crowd filters – Grouply shows Abby the topics that are most popular among her fellow group members today.
• Saved searches and alerts – Abby can tell Grouply exactly what she’s looking for – say a used Big Bertha golf club or discussions about Kelly Clarkson.  When a message is posted that matches Abby’s criteria, Grouply sends her an email alert.

Grouply enables social discovery

Grouply suggests people you might want to meet and groups you might want to join.  Since Abby helps run her mothers club, she is very interested in meeting others who run parenting groups so she can share best practices with them and collect new ideas.  Each time Abby logs in to Grouply, Grouply suggests new parenting group administrators with whom she might like to connect.

Since Abby recently joined a cooking group, Grouply suggests other cooking-related groups that she might like to join.  And Grouply’s Facebook application recommends groups to Abby based on the current interests and activities in her Facebook profile!

Grouply recommends people and groups based on your real-time interests

As Abby reads a conversation in Grouply, she can see which of her fellow group members also viewed the thread.  Perhaps she notices that she and Eve Franken, a fellow mothers club member, tend to read a lot of the same postings.  Abby doesn’t know Eve, but maybe she should!  So Abby clicks over to Eve’s profile page.

Grouply shows which of your group members share your real-time interests

Eve is not the type of person to spend a lot of time “dressing up” her profile page, but fortunately Grouply has been dynamically tracking and collecting Eve’s real-time interests for her – the messages she has been posting and viewing and the groups she recently joined.  Abby quickly discovers that Eve has also been reading up on preschools.  And hey, Eve also belongs to a wine tasting group – but a different one than Abby!  Abby has found a new group to join and a new person to meet.  She sends a quick note to Eve:

“Hi, Eve!  You and I are both in the Pleasantville Mothers Club, and I see from your profile that you are into wine.  Me, too! …”

Grouply, real-time interests, and the interest graph

Hopefully it’s clear that Grouply provides Abby (and everyone!) a far more personalized and improved experience through real-time interest tracking.  And we’re just getting started!

As Grouply builds up information about user interests, we begin to assemble an “interest graph” that shows how we are all connected to each other through our shared interests.  Like the “social graph”, the interest graph has the potential to enable all sorts of exciting new web applications.  More on this in an upcoming post!

The Interest Graph

This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Company.