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CircleUp Launches Social Communications Widget for Group Web Sites and Social Networks

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 June 2007, 09:14 CDT

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- CircleUp, Inc., the leading provider of social communication services for online and offline communities, today announced the availability of an embeddable MyQuestions widget for any Web site, blog or social network serving groups. With the CircleUp widget embedded in an organization or event Web site, users can communicate powerfully with their group right from their site, saving time and enhancing group information, collaboration and productivity.

Whether you're part of a soccer team, non-profit organization or political campaign, you are likely familiar with the inefficiency surrounding group email and IM communication. Send out an "email blast" to the group and get inundated with a full inbox of responses, clutter, disorganization and the redundancy and overload caused by the dreaded "reply to all." CircleUp's free service empowers group leaders to use email or IM to ask a question or gather information from groups of any size and get back a single organized answer that can be used and shared instead of a blizzard of emails and instant messages.

The web today is all about communication and participation, but email and IM still make up the vast majority of social interactions. The CircleUp widget fundamentally changes email and IM from being off-site activities into powerful on-site features that keep users engaged in conversation without having to leave the site.

Web sites and social networks with a CircleUp widget dramatically enhance the communication functionality of their site and expand page views, site visits and time spent on the site by moving users from email and IM clients to the enhanced tools available on the site. By providing the ability to easily embed the CircleUp widget and communicate directly from their sites, a wide variety of groups can benefit from many uses:

-- Sports teams -- To figure out who can drive, who needs a ride, who can haul the equipment before the big tournament and how many T-shirts every team needs -- Volunteer organizers -- To find out who can contribute what for the silent auction and who can actually work the night of the big party instead of dancing the night away -- Grass roots campaigners -- To mobilize and organize supporters for campaign events and manage simple answers to complex problems like how to gather contact information for new supporters -- Brides -- To figure out who wants beef and who wants chicken at the rehearsal dinner, and how to connect the flight information of out of town guests with local friends and family willing to make airport pick-ups

"I circled up more than 90 coaches from different teams a few weeks before my regional soccer tourney to find out how many tournament shirts they wanted in each size," said Denis O'Malley, tournament director of the Concord Cup Soccer Tournament held in Concord, California. "I now have an organized Excel spreadsheet showing the breakdown of 1,518 shirts ordered across 16 different sizes from 90 teams instead of a storm of emails and instant messages to sort through. It saved me tons of time and was much easier for the coaches who responded, too."

Getting Started With CircleUp

To start using CircleUp in any site, a site admin simply visits the "FreeTools" section of the CircleUp site at http://www.circleup.com/, grabs a snippet of HTML code and drops it into any chosen location on their group site or social network. It's a breeze to plug in and manage on almost any site that supports iFrames. All branding in the area surrounding the widget is controlled by the organization and branding inside the widget is simple, basic and references CircleUp.

The widget offers the following functions that allow any user to improve communications:

-- What's Your Question toolbar -- Create new questions and announcements addressed to the group via email or instant messaging without leaving the site -- MyQuestions list -- Keep tabs on recently asked questions, with links to the results for each question -- MyAnswers list -- Keep track of the questions that other members of the group have asked you -- to better track pending questions and monitor questions that you have participated in -- RSS feeds -- Track responses to any question in any RSS reader, including readers on MyYahoo!, iGoogle and Netvibes start pages and widgets from any widget platform to stay up to speed without having to leave the group site About CircleUp

CircleUp is a social communication service that turbo-charges email and instant messaging for information gathering, collaboration and decision making in online and offline groups and communities. It provides a fast, easy way to ask questions of any community using email and IM and get back a single, organized result instead of a blizzard of emails and instant messages. CircleUp users come from a variety of online and offline communities including youth sports, volunteers, schools, Scouts, clubs, church groups, political, alumni and professional organizations. The company is privately funded and based in Newport Beach, Calif. For more information on CircleUp, go to http://www.circleup.com/.

For more information: Deann Mayeda SHIFT Communications for CircleUp dmayeda@shiftcomm.com (415) 591-8404

CircleUp, Inc.

CONTACT: Deann Mayeda of SHIFT Communications, +1-415-591-8404,dmayeda@shiftcomm.com, for CircleUp

Web site: http://www.circleup.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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