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I first saw Cambridge based Wiggio at the Web Innovators Group back in March and was immediately impressed. They launched in the late summer of last year, and immediately positioned themselves as ‘a collaboration tool for college students’.  Why they targeted this market segment is interesting, as I find their tool useful and I’m not in college – in fact, I certainly consider using Wiggio over Google Groups for the features it adds alone. Sure there are lots of collaboration tools out there – we’ve used 37 Signals’ Basecamp at Firelight for some time now and do like the system, even though it does come with (a warranted) price tag.

Collaboration tools are key in any company or business group, small or big.  People who work together on projects need a place to keep their ideas, thoughts and materials organized.  It’s as basic and intuitive as it gets and people have been collaborating withing organizations for decades.  Interestingly, I’ve always found that the barrier of entry into actually using these collaboration tools is perhaps the most difficult thing about them.  Many times, people feel like they don’t have the time to learn a new piece of software or change the way they perform daily mundane tasks that are seemingly repetitive, regardless of the project.

This is where collaboration software has to start – totally and utter simplicity – and this is where Wiggio has succeeded, perhaps even more than 37 Signals.  The tool has basic functionality that you need in any collaboration tool: messaging (via SMS, email, sticky note or perhaps the coolest one, voice), calendar for scheduling events, meeting management (which let’s you set up conference calls or start a chat room) and a filesystem for managing files.

Some of the nifty features that aren’t totally pivotal are the polling feature (for taking votes – come on people, projects should be democratic!) and the links feature that let’s you post links for other members of your group.  Users can be added to the group, but then have to opt-in through an email they receive – a la Google Groups.  Once they are a part of the group, all of the functionality exists for them.

Of course one of the most attractive features about Wiggio is that it’s free (for now), which makes it an attractive alternative to Basecamp, especially for those working outside of a company context, which is where I see Wiggio adding the most value.  One thing that Basecamp does do better than Wiggio is the management of results within a deliverable project.  Features like Milestones and To-Do lists really gear project’s in Basecamp toward getting results and getting things done.  With Wiggio, all of the collaboration tools are there (communication, organization, etc…) but it’s less ‘results oriented’.  Nothing wrong with that, but it is probably suited for a different market – and I’m not sure college students trying to work together on a group project is the right market either.

I guess this is the reason that I immediately though of Google Groups as the same sort of systems as Wiggio has going.  Of course Google Groups has more users, but the next group I start will certainly be with Wiggio, as it possesses all of the functionality Google Groups does, but also adds so many others, creating a truly useful group collaboration engine, especially for community and social group organization.  They’ve received 450K in angel funding from the father of the CTO Bob Doyle.  Their traffic has taken a bit of a turn for the worse in the last few months, but they’re still young and should be able to bring it back and really grow. Here’s a funny video from the company:

And another which let’s you get a better feel for the product: