September is a month of change for Groupee, as we launch a new social networking service and change our pricing model for eve. Important: if you are an existing eve community customer, you will not be impacted at all by these changes.

Our New Service

Launching later today as an invitation-only beta, our new service, simply called Groupee, is a free, consumer network that allows users to create, share, and control their online content and information. Think of it as a social network with a lot more control. The service will be advertising supported and include support for blogs, podcasts, photo albums, files, topics, polls, and more. The service will graduate from invitation-only to open beta in the next couple of weeks.

Eve Pricing Changes

Within the next two weeks, we will be dropping the sale of new Standard Class plans. Eve will only be available as an enterprise service. All existing customers can stay on their current plans, and can even upgrade, as necessary, at any time, amongst the previous Standard Class plan options. New customers will not be able to order Standard Class plan, however.

Again... if you are a Standard Class customer, your plan is not changing at all.

Major Eve Upgrade in Development

Version 1.3 of eve will offer a slew of new features that are geared toward our enterprise customers and that you will get for free- without a price increase. These features include support for blogs, enhanced posting options, a facelift of the existing UI, an enhanced personal profile area, and support for personal spaces – personal blogs and photos – within the community. No release date has been set for Version 1.3, but we are hopeful that it can go to beta this winter.

Eve Customers: What This Means For You

If you are an existing eve customer, nothing changes for you. Your rate is not increasing and your upgrade options remain the same. Better yet, the new features in 1.3 will be added with no change to your price plan.

How is the New Groupee Sevice Different From Eve

Eve is designed for communities that want control over content, powerful management tools, advanced layout and stylistic controls, and advanced features like premium memberships and private web directories. Eve communities are not part of a larger network of communities. Many Eve communities tap into the Groupee Membership system, but that linkage is for user authentication only; eve communities are distinct entities that do not overlap or broadcast content across a network.

Groupee is focused on the user. Though communities can be created by Groupee members, community admins cannot edit content (they can reject/delete content however), have less flexibility in terms of the display, and are not able to set detailed permissions, like eve community admins can.

The power of Groupee communities is that they are part of a larger network, but this may be considered a weakness by some eve community admins. Please note that communities in Groupee in no way resemble eve communities; these are completely different animals.

While we suspect that most eve community admins will not want to switch to Groupee for the reasons listed above, for those that do, please note that there is no data importer currently available. We do not plan to create one until beta testing is completed, which may be many months from now.

Site Changes

The new URL for eve is http://eve.groupee.com. You;ll see an entirely new site debuting there in the next couple of weeks. The new Groupee service URL is http://www.groupee.com. The groupee.com site will redirect to the eve site until we officially launch the beta later today. however.

Eve Communities Using the Groupee Network

If your eve community is using the Groupee Network for member sign-ins, nothing will change for you. You will continue to use that. Your community will not be part of the enhanced Groupee Network, however. Eve communities only tie into the Groupee Network for member sign-ins, and we refer to such legacy accounts as 'limited accounts'. (Any current Groupee Network member does not have to create a new account to join the new, enhanced network, but you will be required to provide some additional profile information if you want to try it. There is no further integration and there never will be for eve. Eve communities are designed to be stand-alone communities, with their own unique feature sets.

Future of Eve

Eve is being actively developed. As mentioned above, we are working on a major new release and plan to continue to make eve the preeminent solution for community owners looking for flexible controls, stylistic freedom, advanced community features, and total autonomy. Our goal is for eve to remain the first choice for enterprise communities- providing the most scalable, feature-rich community platform. If you like some of the design elements in the new Groupee service, you can look forward to seeing many of them added to eve in Version 1.3.

This is an exciting day in Groupee's history. Thank you for your support!

a tear of joy has been released!

So the big question, how do we get the invite?

Cristina
http://www.expattalk.com/eve

I will personally send an invite later today to the first 5 people that request one from me by sending me a private message here.

Wow! This is actually beyond my expectations for the new product. Looking forward to seeing it in action.

Congrats!

Jeff

Honestly I'm still confused - but I'm sure that confusion will be alleviated when the new Groupee launches later today.

Eve 1.3 sounds like what I need for my community. I hope it launches soon.

I'd like to volunteer my site to beta 1.3 if possible.

Forgot to say that I already received all requests for my invite offer above.

That's what happens when I am 9 hours ahead of you all. Anyone else want to send me an invite??? (can't find a begging graemlin so you will just have to imagine it)

siena- send me a pm in the next half hour and i'll send *one* more for the day.

Odd question, but why aren't all current customers given access to the beta version? We have all been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the much talked about new version. We have posted our feedback about the blogs, desired features and have been here through the transition from groupee to eve to groupee (or whatever).

It would be much nicer to get a good look at the beta product to better make an informed decision about the possibility of upgrading or changing over to the new style.

Good luck with the new style. I think that it closely resembles that of another service I was checking out.

I am happy to read that current customers will not be told that they have to switch to a business plan (if I read it correctly). thank you.

Not that this is an authoritative answer by any means, but Groupee is an entirely new application and not an upgrade from Eve. Having played with it for a day now, I see it as a cool and useful tool, but not something that will replace my Eve community. I have a feeling that will be the case for most people too.

While this may have once been "2.0", it looks to have evolved into something much different.

Steven's answer is correct. But aside from that, the real reason is that we have a ton of eve customers. If we gave everyone access now, it would defeat the purpose of having a limited run beta, which we are doing so we can slowly scale up, kill more bugs and benchmark performance before we go to a totally open beta.

This is a huge new service and we want to take it slowly at first, for everyone's sake.

Soon enough, you and anyone else will be able to join.

Hello guys. The news about this new Groupee product was very exciting to read yesterday. Altrought I'm no Eve customer, I am with the UBB products for a long time. So I would really like to test some things out in this new service, as I was already looking for a place to store a little blog. If anybody is able to invite me, then don't be shy and send me a PM!

Will the mobileBlog feature in groupee be available to EVE 1.3? I really like it!

That is not on the current feature list for eve 1.3.

I haven't seen the new Groupee yet but it sounds like Groupee with be competing directly with existing eve communities. It's great from a user perspective to have one login and being able to access several different communities that I would like to participate in but from a community owner perspective, I am not to happy with the idea. If users don't have to leave Groupee to discuss a certain topic, you are taking users away from the individual communities.

But I guess I will need to really wait and see Groupee myself before I can pass a real assessment. Also, I am glad to see updates coming to Eve in 1.3, much needed features like blogging and a personal space.

Hi Rajiv-

Once you see the service, I think you will see that it is not really competing. The eve community experience is vastly different. Of course, you can make your own judgment.

I see that http://www.groupee.com has now converted to your beta test. Do we need to request permission to visit this beta site or is that only limited to those sites that are beta-testing the eve community on their own boards?

If you want to register, you need to receive an invitation, as explained on that site. The beta will be opened up to a wider audience eventually.