Nope, those are the prices. Given how much y'all are willing to pay for square footage where your community can gather, GroupBuzz is a drop in the bucket. :)
-Alex -- /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Jerome Chang <jer...@blankspaces.com> wrote: > Alex, thanks for the really great review of the app. GroupBuzz sounds > perffect! > > ...however, I do think their pricing is a little $$. > $60/mo for 50 members > $129/mo for 150 members > > Am I misreading their prices? > > > *JEROME CHANG* > > *Mid-Wilshire* > 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036 > ph: (323) 330-9505 > > *Downtown* > 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013 > ph: (213) 550-2235 > > > <http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles> > <https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES> > <https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339> > <https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339> > <http://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_home> > <http://vimeo.com/blankspaces> > <http://vimeo.com/blankspaces> > On Jul 7, 2014, at 8:20 AM, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Alex, would you share more info about groupbuzz? >> > > Sure! I'll start with your questions: > > 1) We have a member network website (comradity.io) built on an open >> source custom social network platform. Is groupbuzz an open source plugin? >> > > GroupBuzz is a *hosted* tool for email discussion lists. If you're > familiar with listservs (or heck, even this Google Group), you know how > valuable email discussion lists can be but you also know how *painful* they > can be. Especially as they grow! This list is actually a great example: > when it's valuable, it's VERY valuable. But you have to sift through a fair > amount of noise to keep an eye out for the most valuable topics. > > And with our inboxes getting busier and busier every day, people are often > reluctant to join something that's designed to give a whole bunch of people > a direct line into their inbox. > > As our membership grew and our list got more activity, we noticed a big > problem: people started tuning out posts to our list. Members would find > out about events too late (or not at all). Conversations would happen out > of band from people who would definitely have something contribute. It got > to the point that we'd worry about busy days on the list because we knew > that it would drive some people to create a filter or unsubscribe. > > Not because they didn't want to know what was going on in the community, > but because they couldn't handle the amount of email coming from the list. > They always told us "I WANT to follow the list, but it's just too much > email, I can't deal with it." > > Meanwhile, we know that without email, "forums" and other similar setups > are out of sight, out of mind. A forum needs to have a pretty high level of > activity before members start building the habit of "check back here often > to see something new". > > I spent quite a bit of time researching other platforms - every email list > tool & every forum platform I could find. I don't think I need to tell this > community how frustrating this search is. Everything is a copy of > everything else's sucky "features", and none of them actually solve the > problems that are inherent to groups having discussions online. Discourse > was the first contender that I saw that actually thought about problems > besides getting messages to people, but after a few months of testing with > our community, it turned out to have the same problems as forums (mostly > out of sight, mostly out of mind). > > We had been using Basecamp like a Forum that behaved a bit more like an > email list, but *what I really wanted was an email list that behaved a > bit more like a forum.* > > GroupBuzz untangled this problem for Indy Hall (and the other communities > that have switched to it) by providing a new set of defaults for discussion > list emails. The result looks like this: > > > When a new thread is started, every member gets an email, just like a > normal email list. But unlike others, that's the first AND last email from > that thread they'll get...unless they click that "Follow" button in the top > right corner. > > Once you've followed a thread (which is basically opting in to getting > updates on that thread but that thread alone), you'll get the subsequent > comments in your inbox, threaded, just like a normal email list. > (Participating in a thread also auto-follows that thread for you). > > Once you're following a thread, messages start looking like this: > > > > The Follow button turns into a Mute button, which does exactly what you > might expect: it stops new messages from this thread. > > Even though Gmail has a "mute" feature, it's hidden (keyboard shortcut > only) and most people don't know about it. I've also found that with some > discussion lists, certain threads don't properly mute. Who the heck knows > why! > > Our mute button is "first class", doesn't require any special plugins or > teaching people a keyboard shortcut. It's prominently displayed in every > message, so it's always handy. > > And people love it. Best of all, those members who used to "tune out" > started telling how much less overwhelming GroupBuzz made it to feel like > they were a part of the list. Winning those people back was a HUGE win for > us. > > There's quite a bit more to GroupBuzz than the follow/mute feature > (including the way we do digests > <http://blog.groupbuzz.io/new-discussion-digests-to-help-you-recap-quicker/>[image]), > a fully searchable archive > <http://dangerouslyawesome.com/snaps/Screenshot_2014-07-07_10-32-27.jpg> > [image]. > And our web UI is a full featured forum, not just a rough archive of > messages. There are a number of GroupBuzz community owners/users on the > list, if y'all wanna chime in with anything specific that you love that I > missed :) > > >> 2) How have you used it to grow your business? Converting "community" >> members to be regular visitors? >> > > Community isn't just part of our business, or how we do our business, it > IS our business. > > Our list has been a core part of our community - and therefore our > business - since before we had any space. ALL of our members are community > members. We don't focus on converting members from one level to another - > that's not our goal, though it often happens on its own given enough time. > What we DO focus on is giving people reasons to become, and more > importantly, *stay* members. > > Meanwhile, only 20% of our total community (and less than 50% of our > revenue) are full time members - we actively keep that number limited to a > fixed ratio. That means that 80% of our community uses our most finite > resource (physical space) 3x a week or less. And more importantly, *65-70% > of our community uses a desk once a month or less. * > > I think about our list as another "place" for our community to gather. For > ALL members - full time, various versions of our flex members, and our > flagship Community members - the physical coworking space is only one of > the places where they can do the things that they pay membership for: They > want to meet and connect with people. They want to share and learn. They > want to ask questions and give answers. They want to be inspired. They want > to feel connected. > > The ultimate outcome is that people don't have to be physically AT Indy > Hall to feel like they're a part of Indy Hall. We put as much work into > tummling > in our online community as we do in the coworking space > <http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2014/04/community-management-tummling-a-tale-of-two-mindsets/>, > often intentionally moving offline conversations into GroupBuzz so that > people who aren't present can participate. Online GroupBuzz conversations > often spread into "meatspace" as well, spurring new events and gatherings > among our members. > > *So there are two ways to tie our use of GroupBuzz to our bottom line:* > > 1 - our revenue is nearly 2x what it could be if we didn't have an online > community, but we accomplish that by treating the online community as a > first class community space of its own, not an "add-on" to our coworking > space coworking. If anything, we've started viewing coworking as the add-on! > > 2 - our member lifetime value is....high. Even when members no longer need > physical space, they often keep membership to stay involved in the > community, and a large part of that is through GroupBuzz. > > If you focus on "higher value memberships", you need to make sure you're > not just looking at the ones that you can charge more for. Because yes, > while our full time and lite memberships generate more revenue than our six > pack, basic, and flex memberships...they (full time and lite) cost more in > use of the finite & expensive resource (the space), making the net > *profit* for their membership a closer to that of our seemingly lower > priced memberships which have marginal fixed costs. > > -Alex > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
