Groupee, Inc.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Groupee, Inc., formerly known as Infopop Corporation (and before that, Madrona Park), is an internet software firm based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1996, it moved to Seattle in 1999. Groupee was named one of the 35 "Best Places to Work" in Washington State by Seattle Magazine. It is privately held.
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[edit] Products
[edit] Current Products
- UBB.threads (formerly WWWThreads) - A PHP/MySQL based internet forum system acquired by Groupee in 2001. Replaces UBB.Classic and the original Ubb.Threads.
- Eve - A hosted Java/MySQL based community system targeted towards large corporations. It is made up of four modules:
- Forum - A Java-based internet forum system first released in 2002 as a descendant of OpenTopic but used a MySQL database instead of Oracle. UBB.x became part of Eve in January 2004. The forum module has only been minorly updated since the creation of Eve community, remaining with the final ubb.x version numbering and largely the same feature set from 2003. It remains extremely stable due to this.
- Chat - A live chat room system that was launched with Eve in January 2004. It currently requires flash to use and is the second version of the chat software.
- Premium Membership - An integrated payment system to allow premium memberships to an online community.
- Private Web Directories - A system secure the contents/files on your website. Grant access to any users or groups via the member management system.
- Groupee Network - A new product in 2006, it contains features common to social networking sites. It began beta testing beginning in October 2006 and remained in beta testing as of March 2007.
[edit] Past Products
- UBB.classic (formerly Ultimate Bulletin Board) - Groupee's original internet forum system written in Perl and using a flat file system. end of lifed on June 15, 2006.
- OpenTopic - A hosted Java/Oracle based internet forum system launched in 2000. The last version (3.1.0) was released in March 2004. OpenTopic has been replaced by Eve.
- buzzcast - An HTML e-mail campaign creator/list management service, launched in February 2002 and discontinued in August 2003.
- Groupee Web Hosting Service - Hosting included with the eve/groupee community.
[edit] Product Naming
The OpenTopic product was the initial hosted solution by Infopop. It was largely replaced by Ubb.x, a separate product that was an update to the OpenTopic software.
Ubb.x then went through 4 major versions. In early 2004 Ubb.x was integrated into the Eve platform. The module system of Eve was introduced with the announcement that many modules would be made available; ubb.x was one of the initial modules. Since the initial Eve Alpha testing in late 2003 the number of modules has increased from 2 to 4 and no third party modules have been announced by Groupee or integrated with the software as originally planned. As of March 2007, the forums module remains at the same version numbering it did in late 2003. The other modules remain largely stagnant.
In 2005, along with a planned corporate rebranding, Eve was renamed Groupee Community.
A new Groupee Community "2.0" product was announced in January 2005 with an initial beta test announced for September/October 2005. It was originally meant to end-of-life the current Groupee Community upon its release. The initial beta period was missed and the product evolved into a completely new service behind the scenes.
In May 2006 Groupee Community was renamed back to Eve and will remain an available product, now targeted to large enterprises. The new Groupee Network has no relation to the previous Groupee Community, now Eve Community, or the defunct Groupee Community replacement.
The last major update to Eve Community, as of March 2007, was in 2005.
[edit] Future Development
Groupee is extremely tight lipped as to upcoming features. When feature suggestions are made a common response is something similar to "your feature suggestion has been added for future consideration."
Many times new features take years to be included if at all. This is common for Eve Community where a 5 year turnaround time is not unheard of for basic bulletin board features. UBB.threads is updated on a more regular basis with new features coming in the span of only months.
[edit] History
Groupee, Inc. was originally known as Madrona Park, an internet software firm, founded in 1996. Its first software internet programs included the widely popular UBB Message board (now known as UBB.classic ). Madrona Park became Infopop in 1999, while moving its headquarters to Seattle, where many other software and internet companies had relocated to, including Microsoft. In the year 2005, the firm became known under its current name, Groupee, Inc.
[edit] Management Team
- Ted O'Neill - CEO & Chief Groupee
- Rosemary O'Neill - President & Chief Fashionista
- Lori Hope, CPA - COO & Chief Conductor
- Barry Kaplan - CTO & Chief Craftsman
[edit] External links
- Groupee home page - Groupee, Inc. company website and zone for Web Hosting and Groupee Community
- [1] Eve Community homepage
- UBBCentral - Zone for UBB.classic and UBB.threads
- Interview with Ted O'Neill, Groupee Founder
- Groupee Universal Login Service - Zone for Groupee's universal login system
