Web Worker Daily

I recently spoke with Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, about his product - an enterprise-level group collaboration platform - and he shared some theories of collaboration that led to the development of the software.

He spoke about the construction of a social network and how our networks have dense cores (strong ties) surrounded by dynamic peripheries (looser ties).

The core of an organization - such as the leadership team - tends to work closely together. They process information well and can usually make decisions quickly and effectively. The rest of the team, however, is the dynamic periphery and there is strength in these weak ties.

Traditional groupware serves the dense core, says Mayfield, never connecting to the weak ties. However, tapping into the periphery - the distributed team - can accelerate a project and a process cycle. Socialtext is meant to save the time individuals spend seeking information or the right people with the information or skills they need to get a job done.

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Do distributed teams need a better solution for tracking and making decisions? Zapproved thinks so, and they’ve built a tool to be that solution. The idea is relatively simple: when you’ve got a proposal that needs to be signed off on by everyone on your team, you create it in Zapproved’s web interface. The service then sends emails to everyone with great big “Approve”, “Deny”, and “Comment” buttons. An online console lets you track the progress of your proposals towards (hopefully) group acceptance.

Zapproved also lets you attach files to documents, as well as setting due dates, priorities, and project names. Although you need an account to use the service, the others on your team do no. If your team is distributed and you spend an inordinate amount of time chasing down consensus on routine matters, it’s worth a look. Zapproved is free while in beta, though they do say there will be a charge at launch.