Groops: Yet Another Social Network From Holtzbrinck

Groops is another social network straight out of Holtzbrinck’s eLAB factory (announcement in German, see also our coverage of FamilyLounge which was launched last week.)

Groops is a social network for creating – well – groups. You get all features you might expect (members have a profile and a minifeed, you can create and join groups, groups can be associated with a location and tags, within groups you can post or comment on messages, create or join events, chat with other members) and none you do not really need. The site is nicely executed and has a zero learning curve. The focus and simplicity is almost reminiscent of the tools from 37signals.

This is a crowded space though. Google has groups, Yahoo has groups, basically every popular social networking platform provides groups, Ning lets you create groups and plug in as many features as you need, the list goes on. But Groops is useful in itself, a lot of people obviously want to create groups for various purposes and there are various ways to connect with members or to find and join existing communities which are not easily accessible at other services.

Groops was founded by Jens Doka and Michael Munz and is based in Munich.

(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)