Shareflow, once people try it, gets used to collect more and more comments, files, email, links, whatever people want to save or share, either as individuals or as part of a group.

We have been debating if the  25 MB limit on our free account is limiting adoption.

So forget the limit.

Starting tomorrow, we will be offering  FREE Shareflow with up to 1 GB of storage.

Crazy. That ought to keep you going for quite awhile.  Years, probably.  No invite needed.  Just sign up at http://getshareflow.com.

(If you already have a free Shareflow account, you get the extra space too!)

One of our customers’ favorite features on Zenbe Mail is Files View.  In Zenbe Mail, Files View lets you quickly see any attachments or files you have, without having to track down the email they came or went with.

When someone posts a file in Shareflow, you can find it easily with the search controls in the upper right without needing Files View.

Still, Files View is useful, and some users have asked for this functionality in Shareflow.

On my way out to some meetings  last Friday I made a passing comment as I put on my shoes (we have a no-shoe office), and by the time I got back, our amazing development team had Files view on Shareflow deployed to our staging environment.  They did this using only their left hands, using their right hands to work on their regular queue.

If you don’t see it already, it will be deployed to your Shareflow environment soon.  Look for “Files” under “Starred Post” on your Shareflow page.  The initial functionality will be somewhat simplistic, but expect more expressive filtering and sharing features to be deployed over the next couple of weeks.  Enjoy.

Our most-requested feature will be released shortly: real-time email updates.

Soon, Shareflow users will get real-time notifications via email when new posts appear.  Replying to an email notification shows up as a comment on Shareflow, and sends an email notification to other flow members.

Now your whole team stays connected on Shareflow whether you choose to use it through email, on the web site, via the desktop widget, or on your mobile device.

Real-time email notifications are delivered in addition to your daily digests. Both types of emails can be turned on or off independently.

If you have not used Shareflow, you might ask “If I am just going to get emails and reply to emails all day long, why use Shareflow at all?”

When you use Shareflow, your communication stays organized and accessible:

1) In your email inbox, new stuff comes in on top and old stuff gets pushed off the bottom, regardless of importance. Shareflow keeps everything organized in separate conversations, called “flows”.  You can use email or the web site to communicate through Shareflow and nobody has to do any extra work to keep things organized. No more setting up complicated rules to file important emails from the team – you see the info you need where you expect it.

Keeping important, long running conversations organized is the best way to keep everyone working well together. Cluttering up your the inbox of your team members is probably the worst.

2) Shareflow works in real-time, giving you the immediacy of instant messaging, but the persistence of email or a web page. You can hold a real-time chat with some team members when they are online with you, and the others will be caught up the next time they check in.

3) Shareflow makes it much easier to share files, even very large files.

4) Shareflow is a better way to get work done on your mobile browser. When I open my mobile email on the road, its filled with lots of stuff on a small screen. Finding what’s important is hard. But when I need updates from my most important contacts – like my development team, investors, etc. – I launch the Shareflow mobile web site and can see what’s going on with one click.

With real-time email notifications, everyone will get my Shareflow response right away, and their replies will be added to the flow.

The Details:

• Since many Shareflow users expected real-time email notifications in the first place, flows default to having this feature enabled.
• All flows will have real-time email notifications turned on.
• To disable these notifications for an individual flow, login to Shareflow, select the cog wheel in the upper right, and unselect “Email me notifications of new Activity” on the settings panel.
• Clicking “unsubscribe now” from the footer of any Shareflow email will disable ALL types of types of Shareflow emails: daily digests and real-time notifications.

We think Shareflow demonstrates there are better ways for teams to work together than email, chat, or Google Wave.

We are justifiably proud that, even as a small team, we have deployed Shareflow as a collaboration platform that tens of thousands of teams use on the web, on your computer desktop, on your mobile device, or via our developer API.

Despite our technical achievements, we are lousy at touting our own products.  Lousy. So its very helpful and much appreciated when our customers do it for us.

Some of our favorites recently are:

The new editing functions are great! … [a] downside of Google Wave … is anyone can join a wave and change your posts. Very dangerous. With ShareFlow, I’m in control of who participates so a confidential discussion stays confidential. Way to go! Good job. Though I don’t need to, I subscribed to the paid model to show my support for you folks.

ShareFlow is complete GENIUS in its simplicity and straightforwardness yet without lacking functionality

Zenbe ShareFlow… lightweight, totally web-based. As easy as Staples button.

My friends and I just ditched Wave because it was too obnoxious. Moved back to Shareflow.

Zenbe Personal, our green-bordered free email service, will be shutting down at the end of February.

When we launched Zenbe Personal in the early Summer of ‘08, it embodied some of our ideas on the future of messaging: simple email aggregation, tagging, files view, zenpages, and quite a few other innovations.  Zenbe Personal received respectable attention, and people signed up faster than we ever expected.

Unfortunately, Fall of ‘08 derailed our plans to turn Zenbe Personal into a sustainable business, and we had to pursue other opportunities.

Despite no updates, no customer support, and no new signups for well over a year, Zenbe Personal still has quite a following.  We are sad to shut it down, but Zenbe Personal is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to maintain.

Zenbe Personal customers have been notified, given an extensive migration plan instructing them on how to download their personal data, and have plenty of time to move off of Zenbe Personal.

Shareflow and Zenbe Mail (our un-free, blue-bordered offering) are unaffected.

In fact, we will be expanding Shareflow, with more features, more storage, and a simpler signup, all for free.

“More Shareflow for free? Wait a second”, you might ask. “If you are shutting down Zenbe Personal because you can’t pay for  those hard drives, what is up with Shareflow?”

Fair question.

Zenbe Personal was designed in 2007, with different goals and  implemented on a different platform than Shareflow. Shareflow is built on cloud infrastructures that were not a practical reality in 2007.  Running Zenbe Personal for the few tens of thousands of users still using it is expensive.  Shareflow (and, for that matter, Zenbe Mail) costs are lower, and extra capacity costs us pennies at a time.

With Shareflow, enough customers pay for us to continue expanding the free service.