Every group needs a secret lair
Would you like a subterranean lair with a global surveillance supercomputer, crime lab, library, and garage?
Or, an ultra-secure mansion with twelve rooms, butler quarters, an arsenal chamber, a personal gym, an archery range, a training area, cryogenic storage, and a meeting room?
How about a midtown Manhattan skyscraper with vehicle hangars, a TV studio, a missile silo, an observatory, and every possible type of laboratory?
Not every group lair can be (or needs to be) the Batcave, the Avengers’ mansion, or the Baxter Building. But for just a few dollars a year, your Minigroup account can be whatever you need it to be. Use minigroups as private forums for conversation, spaces for group problem solving, secure storage for shared files, or a creative lab for brainstorming your next project.
We’re giving away 10 shirts every day
Is there a more super group than you and your friends or followers? It would be hard to imagine. So rally your group and get them in on the fun by sharing our Super Groups game on Facebook and Twitter.
Every time you share the game using the hashtag #supergroups, you’ll be entered to win a limited edition t-shirt in our daily draw of ten winners until May 10, 2012.
Winners are being announced daily at facebook.com/minigroupnews and twitter.com/minigroupnews.
Play Super Groups, win a t-shirt
When you’re saving the world, entertaining the masses, or trying to find your princess (in one of many castles), communication and cooperation between team members is essential.
Put your pop-culture savvy and keen business sense to work by playing our new game Super Groups. Reassemble 50 famous (and functional!) groups, and find out how they’d use Minigroup to take care of business.
In a winning mood? Until May 10, 2012 we will be giving away 10 limited-edition shirts every day. All you have to do is share a link to the game with your friends on Twitter and Facebook and use the hashtag #supergroups. We’ll be announcing the previous day’s winners every morning.
Customer spotlight: Brooklyn Creative League
Three years ago, Neil Carlson and Erin Carney founded the co-work space Brooklyn Creative League. Nonprofits, small companies, and freelancers — in areas like advertising, design, architecture, and marketing — share the 15,000-square-foot area in a renovated factory.
Using a minigroup as a private social intranet makes it easy for newcomers to introduce themselves, for Neil and Erin to share building news, and for members to collaborate, ask for recommendations or help, and organize events.
Read more about Minigroup and BCL in our customer spotlight.
Springsteen, The Walking Dead, and Minigroup
Everything dies baby, that’s a fact,
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
~ Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City
It’s been a week since The Walking Dead — television’s greatest documentary about small team collaboration since The A-Team — went on summer hiatus. That’s an impossibly long time to endure the pre-apocalyptic world without mention of zombies.
Minigroup is here to help.
Have you ever wondered what happens to a Minigroup group when it dies? When a project has run its course and you’ve moved on to other things? You could delete it, but don’t reach for that shotgun just yet. There’s a useful middle-ground between here and gone.
If you sign up for a 3-group plan, you can have 3 active groups at any time. When you’re finished with a group, you can choose to archive it.
The contents of the archived group can still be viewed and searched by its members and files can be downloaded. The only difference is that new content can’t be added. Because an archived group doesn’t count towards your group limit, you can now create a new group without exceeding your 3-group limit.
After they’ve been archived, your groups, like zombies, can come back. You can archive and reactivate a group as many times as you want, provided you have an available slot. Unlike zombies, your resurrected groups will be good as new, completely odourless, and will never, ever try to bite you.
New on Minigroup: post via email
You can now post an email to any group you’re a member of. It’s handy for mobile devices, and for posting (forwarded) email messages relevant to a group.
Each group has an email address, unique to each member. To find them, click your name, then Settings> Post by email:
Click a group’s email address to open it in your email client, then add it to your address book so it’s handy - nickname it if you like:
Any attachment(s) will be included with your post. Like with normal posts, you can attach files up to 1GB(!) in size.
Note: When posting by email, you must use the email address you used to register on Minigroup.
Collective nouns for small businesses
A group of geese is a flock and a group of owls is a parliament, but what do you call a group of freelance videographers?
We took inspiration from a list of common small businesses and a list of collective nouns for animals to start a new list that describes groups at different kinds of small businesses.
- A group of personal trainers is called a boot camp of trainers.
- A group of florists is called a presentation of florists.
- A group of accountants is called an audit of accountants.
- A group of graphic designers is called an identity of designers.
- A group of restauranteurs is called a special of restauranteurs.
- A group of booksellers is called a bind of booksellers.
- A group of acupuncturists is called a poke of acupuncturists.
- A group of beekeepers is called a bonnet of beekeepers.
- A group of mechanics is called a clutch of mechanics.
- A group of entrepreneurs is called an ambition of entrepreneurs.
Want to add your own to the list? Post them in the comments below!
What does your Minigroup avatar say about you?
Different social settings come preloaded with expectations about who people are and how they’ll behave.
When you’re amongst friends, casual and conversational is the norm. Boardrooms demand dress codes and handshakes. A team dressing room is full of camaraderie, laughter, and strategy.
From your instant messenger to Minigroup, your personalized avatar is what sets the tone for online interactions.
What does your avatar say about you? Mediabistro’s article about the types of Twitter avatars posits that most images fall into popular categories: logos, casual photography, professional headshots, pop culture elements, and artistic portraiture that might be illustrated or monochromic.
Fast Company focuses on the standard headshot, and how cropping, zooming, and the angle of your head say different things about you.
But what should you do when a single image just can’t communicate the breadth of your personality?
What works with your friends might not be appropriate for your business associates, and vice versa. That’s why Minigroup has a feature that lets you specify a different image for each of your groups.
Sending private messages on Minigroup
You’ve always been able to send “posts to individuals” (aka, private messages) on Minigroup. But some people were confused, thinking these posts were visible to others (like the quasi-private “Wall posts” of Facebook).
So we’ve changed the posting widget to make this clearer. Click “+Post” and choose the “Private message” tab. Send a message to anyone from any of your groups by entering their name(s).
You can attach files and use all the other features of a post, including text styling.
As always, your message will only be sent to the people in the list, and nobody else from your groups will see it.
If you haven’t used private posts/messages before, give them a try. On Minigroup, private always means private!
Click the sheep to clone a group
If you work on repeating projects with the same group of people, you’ll love this new feature. Just click the sheep icon of any group you own to create a new group with the same name, picture, description, and invitees:
You can then edit any field or add invitees:
Sign in to Minigroup give it a try.
