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Amplify Helps Brands Leverage the Social Web Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:08 PM PDT Amplify is a recently launched tool that lets you easily share web content across the social web. As a browser extension, the Amplify button is always there, no matter where you surf on the web. From Twitter to Facebook, Amplify offers a slew of social media networking, bookmarking and sharing sites that you can “amplify” your content towards. You can also share web content with Clipmarks, a social bookmarking site that was launched by the same team behind Amplify. Consider it a bookmarking revival, bringing new life to the Clipmarks service. In order to get stared, you sign in with your Twitter credentials. Then you can install the Amplify bookmarking addon to your browser. From there, you can select text to be clipped and shared. Tweeting content you find on the web is extremely simple with this tool, as is sharing conten throughout your social graph on Facebook. Taking advantage of Facebook Connect, Amplify lets you share customized bits of the web on Facebook. The shared media will appear in your news feed, where most of your Facebook friends will see the shared content. Of course one of the benefits of such a tool is that it minimizes the need for you to have multiple clipping tools in your browser. Instead of having one for Facebook, another for Delicious, and still others for FriendFeed and Tumblr, Aplify gives you multiple options in a single tool. There are other services that offer similar capabilities–ShareThis is one of many tools that let you share web content across a variety of sites and networks. A key difference for Amplify is that you’re also able to archive your shared web content on Amplify’s site, with what the team calls a Clog. This is like a blog with a very ironic term. I imagine in the future we’ll see some additional features being added onto clogs, which could include practicalities like advanced search, real-time updates or custom filters, to name a few. As far as business use goes, there seems to be some potential for Amplify, as many brands that are taking to the web need easily integrated tools for redistributing their content across the social web. While there doesn’t seem to be any particular features designated for just this, it’s something that both brands, advertisers and Amplify can keep in mind for future implementation.

D.C. Based CollectiveX Relaunches as Groupsite Posted: 15 Jun 2009 06:00 AM PDT CollectiveX, the site where you can create your own professional network, is undergoing some major re-branding this week, changing the look of the site as well as the company’s name. CollectiveX is now Groupsite, which is more identifiable as a service designed for groups that would like to work together in an online environment. Launching a couple of years ago, CollectiveX was among the first of the major services to offer free group collaboration products. With a distinct focus on professionals, CollectiveX’s feature set revolved heavily around action-oriented capabilities, and less on socialization. That being said, CollectiveX hasn’t seen the same success as some of its peripheral competitors such as Ning. While CollectiveX has been careful to distinguish itself from other self-sustained network creation sites, it’s clear that a new direction is necessary for the company’s long-term success. Now named Groupsite, the changes made to the website itself remain mostly cosmetic. The focus of the company appears to remain the same–enable teams and organizations to leverage the power of social networking for the purpose of achieving common goals. This particular direction for CollectiveX, now Groupsite, was really pushed forward late last year when the company underwent a mini makeover, adding a series of new features to the site. Will the re-branding work? We typically see more changes internally when a company completely re-brands itself, and that isn’t entirely the case with Groupsite. But the company is also announcing a new program designed for developer partners, which really highlights the fact that CollectiveX is looking to go in a new direction without veering away from its core product and competencies. The new program is called the Groupsite.com Certified Partner Program, which is a selective partnership for developers, designers, trainers, social media consultants and community builders. The purpose of the program is to extend some of the features it already had to the most valuable of its users. While there haven’t been many details revealed for the new program, it appears to be a way to build a foundation for supporting power-users, further aiding in their Groupsite-specific needs for the creation, maintenance and efficiency of their groups.

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