The starting point for anyone who wants to know is that Grouply is a web service for interacting with your Yahoo Groups. More than just an email client, Grouply makes the message archives of any group available to you (and only you) on their servers and in so doing enables you to add social networking features such as bookmarking, tagging and rating on threads that are of interest to you. The entire goal of Grouply is to enable a more productive environment for the normal user of a Yahoo Group.
In providing that set of features Grouply is pretty well robust and complete. Where it is weak is on group moderator features. Right now a very robust debate is taking place on what features are missing, and indeed some might argue volubly whether it is worthwhile to even implement them.
This is an important and seminal discussion that asks the question can Yahoo groups be brought in to the 21st century? In trying to bring web 2.0 features to a very old technology there are some moderators who ask very demanding questions: ones that deserve and need answers. So we have cat and mouse game of vocal moderators demanding new features aimed at them, and Grouply trying to work through those demands in a rational manner.
If one thing can be taken away from this exercise it is that it demonstrates the value of Yahoo Groups to society. Many people, like myself, live a lot of their life inside Yahoo Groups. Some people want to stick with what they have, others wish to explore new ideas. Could this be a key moment in Internet history that is unfolding?
Watch this blog and hopefully we will find out together.
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