I stuck some of my stuff up on HiveLive. I created a few Hives of stuff. Then I shared my stuff. Other people said some stuff about my stuff, and then added some more stuff. So now I have a few hives of stuff up on HiveLive.
Ok, I know you want to know what the hell this stuff is. Well, it’s just stuff. Let me give you one example. I was considering an investment in one company, and I knew two or three other people who were too. So I put all the “stuff” (in this case, on that one company) up on HiveLive. There was text and conversations from emails, documents I’ve collected, and links to more random stuff. This one Hive became the place that I kept my stuff that was just lying around in emails or documents pertaining to that one company. Then I shared that Hive with others who were looking at the same company. We could discuss this info, add more info, and generally stay informed about this company.
“HiveLive started as a new way to manage information online. The catalyst: I got fed up with trying to use a PDA and Outlook and Word and Excel and Postits, and many other applications, to keep track of everything I wanted to remember. All my stuff was scattered in different places. Heads-down a few years ago, I spun together an early alpha prototype of what eventually set the stage for HiveLive. More recently, my brother Geoff and I spent over a year redesigning and retooling the entire system. “ – Founder, John Kembel
Sure, I could have used BaseCamp or some other kind of structured online database. Sure, I was researching the company and wanted to play with their tool. But what struck me as cool was just how unstructured, while at the same time dynamic, each Hive can be. You can just put more stuff into a Hive on the fly, and easily control who else has access to it and at what level. It’s simple social collaboration without the overcomplicated features that many other tools have. The obvious question to John was “how do you make money with this thing?” John responded: “HiveLive is free, and we hope to keep it that way. It turns out that we’re also helping other community-builders to build their own custom information spaces using our unique platform. I can’t say much more about this now, but we’re extremely enthusiastic about the possibilities.”
If you want to try it, you can join the small private beta of about 5,000 users. John is letting the first 200 ColoradoStartups readers into the private beta – click here. Thanks John!
