groupvine

Description:
//(click links to see pictures)//

Groupvine is a online social network that gears to serve the needs of students at campus. It is originated at Wake Forest University and aimed to help students to connect to each other and organize group work. It offers a way to keep groupmates informed in the [|Overview page] which contains announcements and recent additions of your groupmates. Another feature includes the [|social calendar] which can be shared among people you specified or if you don’t the system will automatically make the event visible in the calendar of a similar-genre group. This feature allows groups that have similar focuses to go together and expose to larger range of events. This system provides tools to organize group work better such as the[|to-do list] which a group can determine each other’s work and to keep track of the whole process. There’s also [|messaging] system which works differently than emailing since the messages are displayed in a blog form and are listed under different catergories and groups. So at the same time you can see what other people say about specific topic.

Insights:

 * **//One site that serve most of the needs for group projects//—I** think it’s a nice thing to have everything together. In such way, a group doesn’t have to go check emails, messenger, the campus’ news feed to keep intacted of what’s going on. It’s a much faster, efficient and student friendly way to bring everything together.


 * **//Messaging in Blog form under topics//—**here in Groupvine, you inbox is not limited to receive private one-to-one messenges, rather, you are exposed to all other things that happening in the community. There’s a tagging system that you can browse all the events and what people say about your interest/ topics.


 * //**Good for acedemic and social life of student—**//the to-do list and event calendar allows students to oragnize any group activities and as well as personal ones in a very easy way and the event can be visible to a large range of people which the list in your email account can never achieve.


 * //**Student-orientated design—**//unlike York’s website which place students as a sub-catergory rather than the centre point of design, Groupvine allows students to choose information base on their interest/need. York’s website however tends to list out everything that’s happening and send monthly “alerts” and newsfeed to all students, whether or not they are interested. York’s website seems like a autonomous body that organize students and their affairs at campus which also help seperate and alienate students from on another but Groupvine gives students to take back the control and be able to connect themselves to the community.

Source:
Groupvine. //Function Technologies//. retrieved at Oct 28, 2007 from : http://thegroupvine.com/