Quick Links, Mar 8

Top News
What Does "650,000 Signups" Mean?
Foldera announced yesterday that it has received 650,000 requests for beta accounts of its Activity Folders hosted collaboration service in the three weeks since it came out of the shadows. That's a big number for three weeks. I wonder what exactly that number represents, however: is it:
(a) the number of individuals who have visited the Foldera home page and filled out the sign-up form; or
(b) the number of individuals who have visited the Foldera home page and filled out the sign-up form MULTIPLIED by the number of employees they say work at their firm.

Foldera is fully within its rights to say "650,000", but it should be more clear as to which of the two measures above it is actually using. If (a), and the beta database can be independently audited to provide confirmatory data, then it's an incredible achievement. If (b), then the 650,000 is hugely overstating Foldera's traction and interest. What number would be closer for individual sign-ups if it is (b)?

Let's do some math. Here's the "number of employees" drop-down list from the Foldera signup page, which incidently has the field name of "howmany".

Applying a distribution of individual subscribers across these ranges, based on some guesses about the normal distribution about firm sizes across the world (feel free to grumble about the numbers), I get an actual and "real" beta subscriber count of just under 6,500.

So whether it is 650,000 or 6,500 individual subscribers, as we all know, the metric that truly counts is the number of those beta requests that actually transition to decent real usage. Whilst "650,000" gives some indication of good forward momentum, it is actual users on a live service that will determine Foldera's longevity or otherwise.

Foldera is a client of Shared Spaces.

Near-Time.net Hosted Collaboration Service
I had a briefing earlier today with Reid Conrad and Pat Polinski of Near-Time, Inc., along with Bob Geller of their PR firm, Fusion Public Relations. We were discussing (and exploring) their recently announced Near-Time.net hosted collaboration service. We covered a lot of ground, and it was good to get some hands-on exposure to the service.

There are three core tools within a Near-Time workspace: "News" (a blog with comments, etc), "Pages" (in wiki style, enabling group editing of shared content), and "Events" (a group calendar). Layered on top of these tools are notification and recent update options, file upload overviews, and membership settings.

Some of the themes that we explored during the call were:

• To what degree do you take a "blank canvas" approach to tooling vs. a structured and template-oriented one. In the former, the workspace product offers a standardized set of tools to the team regardless of the purpose to which they want to use the space for. In the latter, the provider overlays some a priori structure onto the tools according to a number of general use cases to which teams put the workspace tool.


• What design choices make sense for hard-core and frequent users of a specific space, compared to those design choices that make sense for those user who are only intermittently involved.


• What points of integration to the user's desktop and existing productivity applications make sense for workspace oriented tools that are "out-there" on the Web? How do you balance offering an outsourced service that minimizes its impact on the user's IT infrastructure, whilst also introducing stickiness to encourage ongoing usage and adoption.

The discussion was good, made me think, and reminded me of what a great group of people are involved in this industry. Keep up the good work Reid, Pat and others on the Near-Time team!

Finally, given their Mac heritage, it was great to see an application that respected my browser of choice, Safari, eg, when working on a wiki page in the "Pages" tool. Kudos.

Vendor Moves

• Microsoft Acquired Onfolio ... Microsoft announced the acquisition of Onfolio, a provider of software that enables people to accumulate and organize collections of research data from the Web and then share that collection with others. The Onfolio technology has been incorporated into the Windows Live Toolbar. Microsoft, with coverage at Boston Business and CMPnetAsia


• RIM On-Campas WLAN Support ... Research In Motion announced 802.11b wireless LAN support in the BlackBerry 7270 handheld, in conjunction with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and an existing WLAN infrastructure. Also enables voice-over-IP telephony, with interoperability tested with Cisco Unifed CallManager 5.0. RIM


• 46% Improvement in a Process at HP ... HP reports that its adoption of collaborative technology in its sales collateral development process has resulted in a 46% time compression in process duration, from 39 days to 21 days. CollaborationLoop


• Alfresco Gets $8m ... Alfresco, the open-source enterprise content management start-up, landed $8 million in a Series B round of capital raising. Accel and Mayfield Fund co-lead the round. ContentWire


• Open-Xchange Server 5 Released ... Open-Xchange, Inc. released Version 5 of its namesake enterprise email and calendaring server. New and upgraded capabilities: better integration with Microsoft Outlook, extended search capabilities, RSS feed support, and improved project management visualization, among others. Available immediately. lxer.com


• Google Calendar ... Google Calendar, code-named (?) "CL2", is coming ... sometime. Key features: threaded layering of multiple calendars, event discovery capabilities, Gmail integration, subscription feeds for desktop calendar integration, among others. Released date unknown; CL2 is in closed-beta with about 200 beta testers. TechCrunch


• Marratech Manager Lite ... Marratech released Marratech Manager Lite, a version of its multi-party audio, video, whiteboarding, chat and web collaboration client for 5-10 users. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Intentionally lacks advanced capabilities required by enterprise customers, but can be upgraded if/when the client needs them. tmcnet.com


• Re Origami ... I want one ... and hopefully I can get one before Eric or Rod ;-) Shallow, I know. CNET News

Comments

[Martin Edic]

Regarding Foldera's beta sign-up numbers: If they are real (which I doubt) then they better have their act together on the hosting side because that's a lot of traffic and storage, even if those users are just 'kicking the tires'. The danger here is that a lot of prospects sign up and then the datacenter goes down, giving a very bad first impression. Strategically this announcement may be an error because it so quickly raises eyebrows...

[Richard Lusk]

Hi Michael,

The answer is B.

“(b) the number of individuals who have visited the Foldera home page and filled out the sign-up form MULTIPLIED by the number of employees they say work at their firm.”

The press release is very clear about how we arrive at the overall number-it says:

“based on the number of registrants and the number of employees they indicated in their organizations”

In fact, the actual number is much higher than 600,000, but in order to take a more conservative approach- when a business indicated 11-20 Foldera’s for example, we averaged the amount to 15, rather than taking the higher number. Our press release was clear about this too- it says:

“we estimate that we have attracted about 400,000 users”

Additionally-you said:

“as we all know, the metric that truly counts is the number of those beta requests that actually transition to decent real usage”

The press release is clear about this too-it says:

“M. Lusk cautions that, "these are expressions of interest and not yet active users on the system”

Michael, here’s how I look at this- Foldera is an Organizer that organizes your work and your teams work- while you work. So while other services like MySpace, Friendster and others are just for an individual. Foldera is a service for an entire Business. So I agree with you when you say that “Foldera is fully within its rights to say "650,000"”, but since you raised the question about how many businesses have requested accounts-going forward, in future releases, I think it would be clearer still for us to say –that Foldera has received requests from approximately 6,500 business for 650,000 Folderas- or something to that effect.

In fact your analysis of the number of businesses requesting accounts is surprisingly accurate.

One last point though-if you compare our traction, of approximately 6,500 businesses to the approximately 14,500 businesses signed up for Microsoft Office Live....

http://www.ipwalk.com/general/show_news/id/11

I think Foldera is doing pretty good, especially since Microsoft has been taking requests since November of 2005 and Foldera has only been taking requests since mid February of 2006. This is an even greater accomplishment when you compare Microsoft’s multi million dollar marketing budget to Foldera's marketing budget of zero.

Thanks Michael, for raising the question. We will be clearer about this in the future.

Richard Lusk
CEO/Founder
Foldera

[Stern]

1 MM signups. I thought it was too good to be true.

[Haarball]

Interesting article, interesting response. I wouldn't say "based on the number of registrants and the number of employees they indicated in their organizations" is making is CLEAR, but at least you didn't try to hide it. You sound like an honest, genuine guy - so does your company.

By the way, remember when you replied to my blog Schadenfreude? I later made another entry adressing your answers and posing some follow-up questions about Foldera. Check it out, if you've got time: http://haarball.wordpress.com/2006/02/24/founder-richard-lusk-explains-foldera/