Grüvie - Organize your Social Websites

Gruvie wins Live Pitch event by Funding Universe!

2008-10-06T12:18:00.004-06:00

So this past week, we had the opportunity to compete in Funding Universe's LivePitch event at the Novell campus. There were 5 companies that pitched to a panel of professionals and an audience of about 60 people or so. We were given 4 minutes to pitch, 3 minutes fro Q&A, and 2 final minutes for feedback. After all 5 of us had finished pitching, the audience and the panels of experts voted on their favorite - and Gruvie won! (yes that is me on the left, Carrie from ListPipe makes me look short)

We were the only social aggregato r pitching; other companies included a bio-fuels company, a blogging content company, and i-phone app company, and a consultancy firm.

There were several great start-ups pitching at the event, so it was an honor to even be slected to pitch - winning was awesome! We got some great feedback and people seemed pretty excited about what we are donig. Funding Universe put on a great event and we want to give them some props for all they do. It is a great company and Brock Blake (CEO) has got some really exciting things going on.

For more info on the event, visit the Funding Universe Blog Post

Where did my email go?

2008-08-29T00:42:00.000-06:00

Many of you have noticed that your Gmail and Yahoo messages are not coming into Gruvie right now, instead there is a message that says they will be back soon. We wanted to apologize about this little inconvenience and tell you what's up. For many people, Gmail and Yahoo have been working great, but for some people the messages are not always working properly. Making sure your email works properly is really important to us, so we want to make sure it is working perfectly (or as close to that as possible), and rather than risk confusion on the site by tweaking things, we have made the tough decision to pull the messages out completely until we can fix it right! We promise to have it back up as soon as possible - and maybe with a new feature or two....

In the meantime, you should notice your gmail and yahoo contacts are still in your address book. So, if you compose a message in Gruvie, you can send it out to these contacts. We don't expect to have any problems with this part of your account.

And here is a secret little bit o' juicy news for those of you that have read this entire post.... there is a new site going to be integrated into Gruvie soon! I can't tell you exactly what it is , but lets just say the birds will be singing at Gruvie.

www.facebook.com - manage your profile, email and more

2008-08-25T14:55:00.002-06:00

www.facebook.com users can now use Gruvie to manage their profile and interact with their other social accounts.

Gruvie's mission is to enable every type of internet user to safely manage and share their unique life.

Gruvie was born out of our own desires for a better way to manage our lives online. There are so many great sites out there for social networking, blogging, sharing photos, and other stuff that trying to remember all our logins was hurting our brains. We have interests that vary from online gaming to sports to travel , and managing our different profiles was taking up most of our time, we needed a place where we could manage our own unique online identites. None of the "aggregators" out there did what we wanted, so we decided to make Gruvie work for us.

Gruvie is more than just a feed or an update pulling in information, it is a fully functioning network that allows us to publish content and communicate accross our different networks. Now we can be a part of as many sites as we want and they are easier to manage. Plus, it helps other sites by showing off our content to all our friends.

Give Gruvie a try today!

Improvements to email!

2008-08-16T10:05:00.001-06:00

We are working fast and furious to improve the way Gruvie works, and we have some HUGE updates coming this next week. One of the most important things we are making better is speed, as Levi mentioned in his last post. We have been doing some testing and the improvement are amazing. The other big development we are excited about is in the Inbox.

Inbox Filtering
So we have always been excited about our Total Inbox on gruvie, but now it is getting even better. We started by bringing together social messages and email, so we didn't have to check 4 different inboxes, which is already pretty cool. While everything in one place is cool, there are times when we may just want to see our Facebook messages, or our Gmail messages, without having all those other messages mixed in. Enter The Inbox Filter. We have just built a filter navigation on the left of your inbox that will allow you to only view the inbox you want to view:

View just your email accounts, or just your social messages. Or you can choose just one particular account to view - Total Control for your Total Inbox. Check out the screenshots below:

A view of all my accounts - notice messages from Facebook, Gruvie, and Yahoo...

A view of just my Email accounts, notice messages from only Yahoo and Gmail....

We Love Speed!

2008-08-12T17:02:00.003-06:00

We belong to the generation of instant gratification, we want it now! This incessant demand for speed is witnessed by the rapid progress in every electronic device we use. From cell phones to laptops, they all do more than they used to and they do it faster. I can't exactly say if our lives are that much busier today that they justify this lust for speed, but it doesn't much matter if this desire is justified or not, it is what it is. At Gruvie we also feel this need for speed. In fact our man Byron has been eat, drink, and sleep speed for the past few days. Gruvie is doing a lot more work than other social networks, it is bringing your stuff together from all over the web. One of the challenges we have faced in providing such a useful site is that it takes time to go out and get your stuff and bring it all back together. But we're making progress, we're almost there, and we can't wait to hear what you think about it.

Gruvie's gone batty!

2008-07-23T10:05:00.005-06:00

We have been working really hard at Gruvie, so hard in fact that we all took the afternoon off the other day and went to the 2:10 showing of the new Batman movie. When we were done a couple of us had a rather interesting discussion about the film, but before I get into that I have to say I thought the movie was amazing! However, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not cut out to be a critic, I am too easily entertained, regardless of the quality of the acting, storyline, or special effects I usually walk away happy. But this movie was especially intriguing because the complexity of the storyline and the characters was riveting. I'll try not to go into too much detail for those of you who have not seen the film yet, but if you are the type that likes to go into a movie knowing nothing this is your warning, read no further.

For starters the acting was impressive, I was not fond of Maggie Gyllenhall who played Rachel, but otherwise the characters were flawless, and as for the Joker, he was superb. But the underlying themes and the way the story twisted our conceptual understanding of society and good and evil was thought provoking. The idea that good can win over evil was challenged over and over as Joker had his way with Gotham and turned the city against Batman and attempted to turn people against people. He was always very creative as he forced Batman and the citizens of Gotham to make decisions between two evils. This was demonstrated most powerfully when he wired two ferries full of people with explosives and delivered the detonator of each to the people on the opposite ferry. One was full of regular citizens and the other was full of prisoners, but each had the opportunity to detonate the other ship before midnight and whoever blew up the other first would survive. This scene was one of my favorite parts in the whole movie and I'm not going to ruin it for you, but hurry up and go see it because I want to talk to you about it!

I guess that is enough for now and I'll have to do a follow-up post later to discuss the film in more detail. If you have already seen it please tell me what you thought about it in the comments section.

Conference Table of Champions

2008-07-14T18:57:00.006-06:00

I want to make sure we maintain a healthy balance between informative blog posts and pointless ones....

The big news of the week? Our new Ping Pong Table (oops, I mean conference table) is here. That's right baby, strap on your short shorts and pull up those tub socks because we got some pong to play!

Who needs some 8 ft mahogany "pretty boy" table collecting dust in some glass room when you can be negotiating a wicked spin shot into the corner, finalizing deal terms on the next tournament, or slipping in a drop shot when your competitors are least expecting it?

Don't worry, we still spend plenty o' hours staring at 1's and 0's, working to get Gruvie up and running for you, but occasionally even the most dedicated keyboard jockey needs to break out into a little "tennis for real men" - there's usually some tears, a little blood, and a lot of sweat (ok a lot of tears), but it's all worth it when you hit that elusive 21!

All are welcome to come join in the madness, but be warned, you may have to face the unbeaten, the unparalleled, the hard to believe . . . Betty the Bomber - Don't mess with her our you'll end up wrapped in her couch cover at the bottom of the river!

Gruvie out.

The Latest from Gruvie Buzz

2008-07-07T16:06:00.003-06:00

The excitement around the new Gruvie launch is growing. Hundreds have inquired and hundreds more are visiting the site each day looking for the new Gruvie.

We are close to launching the new Gruvie in Beta. features will include pushing and pulling from Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, YahooMail and shortly after the initial launch; LinkedIn, Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr, and Blogger. Pretty cool huh!

By August we should be connected with over 15 sites. Gruvie could very well be the fastest growing social network in history!

Stay tuned as we prepare for Gruvie launch!

A shout-out to the Snack Goddess

2008-07-01T08:27:00.004-06:00

As Levi mentioned, our cupboard is fully stocked with all of life's essentials: trail mix, chewy granola bars, fruit snacks, and candy... oh and don't forget the sacred Otter Pops! Now since you know we are too entranced by whatever new toy is on our computer screen, we aren't making trips to the store for all the yummy goodness - this bounty has been bestowed upon us by another kind soul.

Enter the Snack Goddess.
Sometimes she also goes by Melody. She is the one that keeps things running around here and we want to take a second to thank her for keeping us all alive! All the talking and designing and developing in the world will only do so much, we can't get very far without Melody. So thank you snack goddess, for blessing us with your life force, feeding our stomachs and our egos - without you we might all be working in a cubical at microsoft :(

Gruvie Is Sweet(s)

2008-06-27T09:04:00.002-06:00

I guess I'll leave the useful and informative posts to Ian, and I'll keep you up to date on the sweets cabinet. As you can tell from Ian's previous posts there have been a lot of exciting changes at Gruvie. As the site's functionality and design continue to improve so does the sweets cabinet. As you can see we have everything we need to put in the long hours necessary to making Gruvie the social solution that will work for all of us. A lot of thought, discussion, and testing has gone into developing Gruvie. We can't wait to launch and let you see just how sweet it is. We are currently undergoing extensive usability testing and will continue to need feedback on the site and any issues you discover using it. Get ready to start using the coolest new social site out there. But if you discover any glitches or problems in the beginning don't worry, we expect them and are ready to fix them. Please check the blog often for new developments and contact us with any feedback about improvements or fixes, and if you want any sweets stop by the office.

p.s. if you do stop by stay away from the red licorique, it's a little stale!

Gruvie New looks

2008-06-20T23:35:00.000-06:00

There is so much cool stuff going on at gruvie it is hard to keep up. One of the most fun things we are doing has been changing the look of gruvie. First and foremost, we have been changing the landing page of www.gruvie.com. Below is a DRAFT of that new page - this is a work in progress and the actual will probably be slightly different, but this is a good taste of where we are headed:

The idea is to keep it simple, clean and explain what we are doing. The simplified header with the single grey header bar and white above will be consistent throughout the site. I'm excited to share more as soon as I can, and keep your eyes open, this should be up before too long....

Logo Nouveau (Gruvie)

2008-06-17T16:54:00.000-06:00

That's right folks, a new logo (we know we know, about time) We have been making a lot of changes at Gruvie, and sometime it is frustrating because you can't all see them. Well finally there's one thing I can share with you all - the new Logo:

Sorry the image quality isn't all that good, that's why they don't let me play with photoshop . . and the real designers are too dang busy to help me with the blog. There are tons more changes other than just the logo, but i was stoked to at least get to put something out there. Tell us what you think.

Social Networks coming together

2008-06-16T07:12:00.001-06:00

So things are finally starting to come together. I can't share too much yet, but we have started testing the new features we are developing for Gruvie. I have included some "first-look" screen shots of the new features. Don't try and look for these on Gruvie now, because they aren't there, but we hope they will be launched soon. For now, here is a little taste to wet the appetite:

This is an overall screenshot of the "My Life" page:

Notice my friends from Gruvie, Facebook, and MySpace!:

And wall posts from Gruvie, Facebook, and Myspace!

There's alot more to come - keep checking back. Or better yet, subscribe to the blog feed.

5 Days to Pre-Launch

2008-06-11T08:36:00.002-06:00

Relieved... I felt relieved when I read Sprout Builder's blog dated January 24th, 2008: 5 days to go [until we launch]. It's nice to know that there are other start-ups that are running around stressed, worried, and LOVING what they are doing, thanks for web logging your countdown to start-up, you give this marketer a sweet perspective.

Working in day 1 start-ups is stressful and an absolute blast at the same time. One minute we feel like we are running around squashing bugs then then next were grinning ear to ear after drilling down on our marketing strategy. I can't wait to see where Gruvie will be at in 6 months... a year... ten years. Oh, and as far as the bugs go.... it's amazing, they usually get squashed pretty quick... props to By-ron the mon he puts the "capital D" in Developer.

Licorice and Granola Bars

2008-06-10T10:01:00.007-06:00

We at Gruvie don't get out much, not even for lunch. We are busily developing and fine tuning the site, and with our launch date quickly approaching there is no time to spare. But nobody's complaining, and I think that is primarily due to the treat cabinet. We are stocked with all the red licorice and granola bars anyone could ask for. I'm not saying were not looking forward to a Big Mac someday soon, but for now were sacrificing those precious two beef patties, special sauce, and the sesame seed bun for the good of Gruvie, and you're going to thank us. The new changes and increased functionality are going to help your online social life in ways you can't imagine. We can't wait to let you in on the secret, but for now just know what were giving up to bring you the Gruvie you're going to love.

Although, if you're in the area I wouldn't mind a little beef :)

New Direction for Gruvie

2008-05-19T10:31:00.006-06:00

Ok, so we have been talking a lot here at Gruvie about our personal issues with the social web. We all agree that managing our various forms of social activity on the web is overwhelming, from social networks to email to blogs to whatever; which has lead us to try and create a solution that will make all this more managable. We know there are plenty of "aggregators" out there, and we have been using most of them, but we want to do more than get a feed of updates or see a snapsot of the number of new messages we have on various networks - we want to be able to interact.

However we are realizing that we also have very different personal interests. Caleb is a marathon runner and Levi follows politics and I love soccer - which leads us to very different places on the web. So we are trying to figure out a way to not only manage the networks we have in common, but also bring together our own unique lives and allow us to share that with our friends.

Imagine a site where you can see all your friends from facebook, myspace, and linked-in; and read your emails from yahoo, gmail, and hotmail; pull photos from photobucket and videos from youtube. We think that would be pretty cool. Now imagine you could post content to those sites all from that same location... getting even better. What if you could also bring in content from your unique sites, like fantasy football, recipes, or whatever...now we're talkin'.

We're getting pretty excited about where this is headed. We would love to hear from you - what do you think would be cool?

Stay tuned...

Frustrated with the Social Web

2008-05-06T17:57:00.000-06:00

At Gruvie, we are becoming frustrated with the social web. We started Gruvie last year as a cool new social network (custom url, gruvie bar, etc) - but now we think it can be so much more...

Social Web-lunacy
There are so many different social websites out there - facebook, myspace, linked-in, youtube, flickr, photobucket, digg, imeem, hi5, bebo, twitter..... and the insanity continues. I can spend half my day just trying to keep up with these networks. Then what if I want to check my email - oh wait, I mean email addresses plural (since I have 5)! Not to mention my blogs, my custom sites, my chat... everytime I open the internet I end up with 15 tabs at the top!

But they're all good sites. I don't want to cancel any of my accounts, in fact I would add more if my puny little brain had room for the login info - and if I could make the day 30 hours long.

I am voluntarily trapped in this sticky web of social madness, just waiting for the black-widow we call the internet to finally decide to finish me off by sucking the last few drops of blood (I mean time) I have left.

Cut the Web?
So now what? Do I McGiver myself a knife out some duct tape and the loose change in my pocket to cut myself free? As soon as I free myself from this web I fall thousands of feet, plummeting to my e-death, cut off from the world of news, blogs, and basically all form of human communication that remain in the new world of technology. I don't want to lose access to these sites, I just need to find a way to tame the beast!

What about the aggregators?
Ah yes, the aggregators. Sites like FriendFeed, Spokeo, mahsedlife, mugshot, etc. I appreciate the attempt, but it doesn't seem like the right solution - rather than dozens of social sites I have to check, now I can have thousands of tiny spiders invading my inbox or my desktop, just because someone I met one time posted a new photo on his blog.

We need something better!
There has to be a better way to manage this madness. That is what we are hoping to do at Gruvie. More to come......

Gruvie is Launching! - Win a FREE 80GB iPod

2008-03-05T16:11:00.002-07:00

Grüvie is launching!

And we’re giving away FREE iPods to new members! We’re the hot NEW Social Network and Aggregator that gives you your own Domain Name--And right now, you have a sweet opportunity to get a brand new 80 gig iPod, simply for joining up! That’s right, all you need to do is register and you are automatically entered to win. You’ll become a member of the hottest new social network, choose a unique domain name that describes YOU, make your own page complete with all the features you love, AND be able to get to all your other social pages in Facebook, MySpace and others from your Grüvie page.

Here are the Details:

From Wednesday, February 27, 2008 until 11:59pm on Monday, March 31st, 2008 new members of Grüvie are automatically entered to win an 80 gig Apple iPod. No purchase is necessary, and we only require that you register to be a new Grüvie member. We have multiple iPods, and since we’re just launching, your chances of winning are very good! That's right! Multiple opportunities to win!

Register as a new Grüvie member here.
Fill in the info required.
Choose your personal domain name.
Next, click on the "go" button to finish your account.

That's it! You've entered the drawing! Now you just wait a bit. We will notify you via email within 30 days of the end date of the contest if you are a lucky winner. If you don’t win the first time, just wait a little, because another drawing will be held shortly after and you will have ANOTHER chance to win!

Good luck and be sure to let a friend know about this contest!

Are you feeling Grüvie?

2008-02-26T16:08:00.001-07:00

Grüvie is the only social network that gives you your own domain name. Use your own web address to share all the sites you visit on the internet. Grüvie is also an innovative social network that gives you a profile type dependant on who you are, lets you socialize through groups, and allows you to upload and share videos, music, and photos.

Your Own Web Address

When you sign up with Grüvie, you get your own personal web address. Finally, you have your own website with a name you can share! Names like Brendan.IsGruvie.com or TravisG.RipsTheGuitar.com will give you your own presence on the internet.

The GrüvieBar

On your new Website you’ll find the GrüvieBar. Use this as your personal portal to the web. This lets you use your address to share everything you do on the web. You can put links in the bar to all your social networking sites, video and photo sites, favorite sites or anything you like. By default, the home link goes to your Grüvie network.

The Grüvie Social Network

With your new domain name and Grüvie bar, you also get the Grüvie network. This is a new social network built in a completely new way. Different account types for different kinds of users let you better express who you are, while Groups allow you to join or create communities based on what you do. Groups then let you chat, keep calendars, and share music and videos with people just like you. Use these calendars to automatically notify your friends of events.
Sign up now to upload photos, start your own blog, and discover many other ways to express yourself and to stay connected.