By V. Vijayalakshmi, IANS
Pune : If you thought social networking sites like MySpace, Orkut and Facebook were the ultimate places to interact with people, think again. An Indian company has gone a step further with FlockPod, an innovative social networking application.
The Harbinger Group, which created the FlockPod, says it is the world’s first social interaction pod – a small place on any web page where people get together and interact on the spot while staying on the page.
According to the company, the central idea of the FlockPod is to provide a space on any web page to collaborate and interact right on the spot, to share ideas, opinions, experiences, anecdotes or sometimes even to question, reason or debate.
“We are excited to push the envelope of web 2.0 with FlockPod, and bring its benefits to large user groups. At the same time, we continue to offer the FlockPod free to other user groups with limited size,” Vikas Gupta, chairman and managing director of the Harbinger group, told IANS.
So how is it different from other social networking sites?
FlockPod allows different kinds of activities called Flocktivities. For example, a user could do a poll, open a debate, point to interesting things on the web, and so on.
A user can customise the FlockPod by selecting different backgrounds according to liking and mood. It can turn transparent, move and grow larger or smaller.
Even if somebody does not want to add a FlockPod to a web page, the FlockPod website itself hosts a page from where she can access all her FlockPods.
FlockPod is compatible with most web pages and blogging sites.
FlockPod membership is only through invitation, so others cannot find out what Flocktivities you are doing together. Groups with more than 5 members have to pay for using the software.
“Companies can use FlockPod in a multitude of ways. They can invite debate and feedback on electronic documents, conduct spot polls and surveys of their employees and customers, allow knowledge workers to support each other, create mini knowledge bases, foster informal learning, collaborate on web research, create online user communities, and so on,” said Gupta.