After implementing Zenbe’s conversation view two years ago, arguments against the usefulness of the feature have been rare. Most feedback ranges from ‘I like it’ to ‘It changed my life’. For those in the camp of wanting simplicity at all costs, we do allow users to switch back to viewing a single message at a time, but most never look back after giving conversation view an honest try.

If we get nothing but praise for this feature, why is it so rarely found among Zenbe’s competition? Because it’s difficult. Not difficult to understand or to use, but difficult to implement.

Read on for an in-depth discussion of what makes this problem so difficult, how we’ve solved it, and why it was worth the effort.

Hi folks, just thought I’d share a little bit of what I’ve been up to lately. As you know Shareflow has a great HTML5 mobile web client that we’ve recently enhanced with new features to manage your Shareflow posts.

I’m now working on a native iPhone application that will include all of the features of our HTML5 web application plus camera/photo upload integration, offline data access, location integration, better email/sms integration and improved native feel and performance.

I’m using the excellent three20 framework originally created at Facebook. Three20 provides a nice bridge from a web development mindset to the iPhone SDK by introducing concepts like declarative styling, URL based navigation and simplified remote resource access.

Here are a few screenshots of the work in progress.

We’d love to hear your ideas for other things you’d look for in a native iPhone application. Tweet your ideas @shareflow.

One of the best ways to use Shareflow is to collaborate on files, and in this release, we’ve focused on a number of ways to make file collaboration easier and more natural.

Include File Attachments In Your Replies

One of your most-requested features is here! You can now attach files to a comment.

This is a great way to work together on a document. For example, say a coworker posts a draft version of a file for you to review. You can make your changes, and attach your version in a reply to the original post—keeping the original and subsequent versions together in one post. Just click the button to attach a file to your comment. We’ve also made it easier to post a set of files all at once and include a comment. Just upload the files you want and make your comment before posting. This works for both replies and original posts.

Here’s a quick demo of this new feature in action:

Works with Email Too!

We know that some people prefer to work out of their email inbox. That’s why we added real-time notifications and the ability to respond to Shareflow posts via email. With our latest release, you can now include file attachments in your email responses to Shareflow posts. The attached files will be added to your comment in Shareflow.

Drag and Drop from your Desktop

At Zenbe we like to stay on top of emerging technology and we’re big fans of HTML5. Firefox 3.6 now supports native drag and drop file uploading from your desktop.

Check out this demo:

For those of you that prefer not to use Firefox 3.6, we also have a great desktop widget that allows drag and drop file uploading.

Enrich the conversation with Tweets and Google Docs

We’re always looking for innovative ways to enrich the conversations in Shareflow. We already enhance Shareflow posts by embedding youtube, vimeo, hulu, flickr, and wikipedia content. Now we’ve added Tweets and Google Docs to the growing list of content that we automatically identify and embed. Embedding a tweet in Shareflow is a great way to discuss and archive feedback your company or group may be receiving on twitter.

Signup for Free Today

Shareflow now offers 1GB of file storage, unlimited collaborators and unlimited conversations all for FREE! If you haven’t signed up for Shareflow yet, there’s no better time. Thanks so much for using Shareflow and keep the feedback coming!

Shareflow has won the Reader’s Choice award from About.com.

Congratulations, Shareflow!

Like all such awards, its just a matter of how many friends you have.

And that’s true, except that no one in our office has any friends, or was ever voted class president, or anything.   We are so ordinary its not worth discussing.

But Shareflow rocks.  We don’t have any friends, so our customers must think so. Thanks, everyone!

Next week we will be deploying some changes that our beta testers have enjoyed for a few weeks:

Simple document management

You can add and delete multiple files, to a post or individual comment, via web, desktop, or email.  You can post multiple versions of a document and keep the comments associated with each, or delete older versions of documents but keep the comments, or any combination. Its the simplest, most flexible document workflow available.

Drag and Drop Files

Just drag a file from your desktop and drop it on a flow. This only works in Firefox 3.6, but its very handy.  Of course, you can do this with our desktop widget, dropping files into your browser is fun too.

These features and more will be coming out next week.  Stay tuned.

Shareflow was recently nominated by About.com for “Best Email Innovation of 2009“.

Please show your support by heading over to About.com and casting a vote for us!

If you haven’t checked out Shareflow yet, get a free account and invite some of the people you communicate with the most. It’s a great replacement for group mailing lists, whether it’s for your local soccer team or an entire department at your company. Try it out today.

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.