The word “Stream” seems to be popping up a lot to describe a new form of group communication. Unsurprisingly, people are looking for a way to communicate that sidesteps inbox problems.  I get hundreds of emails a day, on way too many topics. My inbox is a dumping ground of communication. I can’t part with it, but its not a solution to topic- or project-oriented communication. This is such an ordinary problem its not worth describing in any more detail, or barely worth describing at all. (I’ll post the white paper later).

We started Zenbe not just to build better email, but to build better communication, and that’s how we stumbled into creating ShareFlow – as a solution to our communication problems that are not solved by an email inbox, chat, or micro-blogging.

John Borthwick at BetaWorks poetically describes an alternate way of describing communication:

A stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.

Almost word for word, Borthwick’s description matches our pre-development concept descriptions of ShareFlow. Many of our original names were based on “stream”, but its a noisy name space, and as the creator of a popular stock streamer called “Streamer” during Web 1.0, I have a bias against using that word as a name again, except perhaps an actual stream. We went with “flow,” as ShareFlow provides a mechanism for staying in a mental state of flow, focused on a topic with a specific and collaborating audience.

Collecting content and staying focused on a specific topic with people that matter. I struggle to spend more time in flow, not less. This is where email, chat, and services based on social media fail me.  In practice, of course, its not so heavy. But as we move more  communication over to ShareFlow, it definitely improves our entire team’s ability to focus, and sidestep the clutter and perceived urgency of our email.

ShareFlow is packaged as a collaboration service within Zenbe Mail, but feedback has been so encouraging, we will be releasing it as a standalone service in a few weeks. For free. Stay Tuned.