How does egrupos.net compare to other services?

egrupos.net has be described by some as a "yet another Social Networking" site... Whatever that means!! We think that lately, whenever a site offers tools and services "that help people stay connected", they're automatically labelled as "Social Networking sites".

Truth is, we don't consider egrupos.net to be a Social Networking site (SN from now on). First of all, the best and largest SN "site" has been around for quite a while and it works pretty well. It is known as the Internet.

Yet, we're sometimes labeled as a SN site because, well, some of the services we offer are very similar to what those other sites already established as "SN sites" offer. The fact is, a true SN platform should do a lot more (and at the same time a lot less) than what these sites, including ours, offer. We're just a site that offers some - we believe - nice and useful services, name it whatever makes you happy.

But because of this constant comparison with "other SN sites", just for the record, we'd like to tell you, not why we don't think we are or are not a "SN site", but why we believe that we're a bit different from most of those other so-called Social Networking sites. With egrupos.net we're trying to provide a service that enhances communication between people and helps them do things we believe are important. We're not the killer app nor the next big thing, and we don't pretend it to be. Nothing we do is particularly new on its own, but we felt there was a connection between these subservices that could provide very useful and that we had the expertise to make it a reality.

• We offer powerful email groups that have nothing to shy away from sites like Yahoo! Groups and that help you communicate with others right from your email software. Other "SN sites" offer at most, flavored web forums, that force you to visit their web site to participate or merely stay up-to-date in what's being discussed or said. In fact, this is our greatest offering to you - even if you were not to use anything else we offer, our email groups can replace any other email group service you may have been using until now. We used to describe our email groups as The Most Complete Mailing Lists, Groups and Newsletters System on the Net and we do not shy away from that a bit.

• We give you an environment global in nature (like the Internet, like the world we live in) but that at the same time - we believe - allows you to control when to act local and when to go global.

• We offer simple tools for you to expand whatever you do in our site to your own site: RSS feeds, publishing of subcontent that lives in our site (and we don't mean weblogs) in your own web pages, etc.

• Whenever possible (and we're open to ideas) we let you use the tools you want   to use our services, rather than forcing you to come visit us for everything (for example, as mentioned before, our email groups allow you to participate or read what's posted to the groups without leaving your email program).

• We offer you a selling/trading area that, not being as complex as eBay, it gives you more than just a classifieds section (of course a trading area becomes more useful as more items are traded, but that's mainly up to you), including some interesting "alert" services so for example, if you post a "wanted" item and later someone offers that item for sale and it also matches other criteria previously selected by you (location, etc), you are immediately notified. And other nice features not found in traditional classifieds ads.

• And yes, we offer you the "traditional" Social Networking toys to keep track of your contacts, grow your network of contacts, photo album, guestbook, etc.

• And all of it by using an interface that we believe is simple, clear, easy to use, and that doesn't clutter your browser with 45 different options to select from at any time, yet, powerful enough to let you do what you need to do.

• Last, we don't want to follow the buzz and the hype, so whenever we can, we'll try to call things by their name. For example, when others talk about "friends", we talk about "contacts". Some will be friends, some will be a family member, a coworker, your boss, someone you met online... who knows, you decide - not everyone you wish to stay in contact with has to be your "friend", right?

  In the end, we're here for whomever wants to join us in this adventure, and hopefully get the best use from the services we offer. That's why we're here for. Care to join us? :-)