Innercircle.cc is an easy little tool that lets you email groups of people using a single email address.
So, for example, it lets me create “family@marshall.innercircle.cc,” which I can use to correspond with multiple family members — without having to manually add each name into the “to” box each time. My relatives can use the same address to correspond back to me and others in the group.
I can send to that address from any account, for example from my Outlook, or online Gmail account. I can also choose to allow my family members to see the other members on the list. Or I can make it private.
Innercircle.cc, a Sunnyvale, Calif. start-up that has just launched, requires you to register for an account. It gives you an online dashboard, where you can enter the addresses of each family member or friend you want included in the group. It lets you edit the group over time.
It lets you create up to 50 different group email addresses.
The alternatives to Innercircle aren’t great. Using regular email, I have to manually add multiple addressees, but that wastes time if I’m emailing the group over and over. I can create email groups within Outlook, but those are usually for emailing groups within the same company. There are also higher powered products, like Constant Contacts, which costs between $15 and $225 a month depending how many people you are contacting, which requires uploading lists. It’s not as spontaneous as Innercircle, where I can whip up a list in seconds, and send to a group from my Gmail account. Innercircle is free.
Unfortunately, the company isn’t yet storing the emails at its site, so you can’t easily see all the messages you’ve sent or received. Chief executive Raj Lalwani says email storage will be added in a month or so. However, since each email group you create contains your own email address by default, say at Gmail or Yahoo Mail, you’ll get a copy of each Innercircle email sent to your regular email address. I tried it out over the weekend with some family members, and it worked great.
To help you create groups, it lets you copy and paste email addresses from Gmail and other address books. You can copy and paste comma separated address (if you want to say, import addresses from Outlook).
It’s not clear yet how this company plans to make money. Lalwani says he hopes to make money by getting a cut from Amazon, through its affiliate program — via links contained in Innercircle’s emails. Below is a screenshot of how the Innercircle group email creation page looks (I’ve blacked out the email addresses of the members in my group.)
12 Comments
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...Paul said:
How is this service any better than Yahoo Groups, which has Yahoo powering it, has existed for almost a decade, already stores emails, allows for unlimited group creation, and supports so many other features?
I’m surprised Yahoo Groups wasn’t even mentioned as an alternative/competitor.
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Raj Lalwani said:
Paul, good question. Unlike Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups, Innercircle.cc is designed with personal use and simplicity in mind.
A user can create several groups (or “innercircles”) without worrying about finding a unique name across all users. So, once you have a userid, say, johndoe, you can create friends@johndoe.innercircle.cc, tennis-buddies@johndoe.innercircle.cc and so on.
In addition, a user can set up innercircles for private use (only the user can send email without others knowing who else is on the list - no need to BCC) or open them up to the members of that innercircle so they can all share things with each other using the same innercircle.cc email address.
Innercircle.cc is centered around you the user v. the group. It is also designed to be more email-centric than web-centric. Over the next few months you will see new features and services that will make the differences even more pronounced.
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twothree said:
“he hopes to make money by…”
He hopes? Oh my…
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Greg said:
I figure the target market for this is people who don’t know Yahoo Groups exist. The reviewer is simply a member of the target market. And there are a lot of stupid people in the world, so…
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Raj Lalwani said:
TWOTHREE, here is a better way to put it ;-)
We plan to make money by combining the power of word-of-mouth (actually an ideavirus) and affiliate programs. We will publish exact details in future as we roll out our vision. It is important to keep in mind that word-of-mouth is effective only if it is truly a private dialog between friends. We cannot control what users are telling their friends but we can certainly make it easier.
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Tom said:
Raj -
From your comment to Paul, you make it sound as if the only innovation your making in the listserve arena is simplicity. What else would you consider to be the major strengths of Innercircle.cc?
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Raj Lalwani said:
Tom,
The much bigger difference is that Innercircle.cc is designed for “personal” use. Both Yahoo! Groups and listserv are designed for use by a group. Someone creates a group and it is up to members to accept invitation or request joining listserv list.
Yahoo! Groups clearly discourages adding members to your group without an invite:
“If you want your members to have access to the group web site, we strongly recommend that you use the Invite Members feature.”
They also limit how many you can add per day:
“The Add Members feature allows you to automatically add people to your group’s mailing list. You can add 10 members to your group per day.”
On the other hand, an Innercircle.cc user can instantly create a list of all the family members who need to be sent photos of the new born baby, and can add family members and in-laws to the list. Then right from the hospital the user can take pictures using an iPhone and send them to photos@johndoe.innercircle.cc.
I don’t think it makes sense to use listserv or Yahoo! Groups to send an invitation to the whole family and wait for them to join the group before you can send photos. I personally have 35 members in my photos innercircle - it will take me 4 days to add all of them in Yahoo! Groups. On top of that I have over 15 such personal innercircles - friends, both sides of family, staff, board, tennis buddies, etc.
To rephrase someone else’s quote, what users want is TiVo, Starbucks and Google - they want it their way and they want it now!
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Peaches said:
This is a great tool! I recently created an innercircle for my extended family (11 email addresses) and we’ve been using it to communicate about Thanksgiving plans. It was easy to set up and I know that nobody was left out of any conversation and everyone has the same info. I’m sure we’ll use it for our holiday planning, sending links for Christmas wish lists for the kids, and photo sharing.
Others have mentioned Yahoo! Groups and I feel that in some situations that Yahoo! Groups is overkill. My extended family doesn’t need all the bells and whistles of Yahoo Groups, and to be honest, I can’t count on all of them to go through setting up yahoo acoounts and joining the group (especially the older generation of my family). This was the perfect, simple way to bring everyone in my extended family together. I am a member of several Yahoo! Groups for other things, but those groups really utilize all the extra features.
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David Jordan said:
Tom — don’t discount simplicity. It can mean worlds of difference.
For example, there’s a reason why many people buy compact cameras instead of SLRs. You could argue that SLRs have all the features of compact cameras and more. So why should anyone buy a compact camera? Because it does exactly what they need it to do. More features does not mean better for many people.
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Nathan said:
Doesn’t yahoo groups limit group members to people who get a yahoo address? That seems to be the biggest difference to me. There are apparently other free “discussion list” type services that allow any email addresses, such as coolist, freelist, and topica, but coolist doesn’t seem to be working, and freelist requires discussions to be technology related. Topica seems good, but I might check out innercircle. Topica does require users to accept your request and then they have a bunch ads that they are supposed to click through (although I’m not sure if they actually have to.) Apparently not much ads in the emails though..
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Jason said:
Raj, this is a nice and simple solution. I do agree that I would prefer to use this than Yahoo Groups, but there is one downfall that I see. There is no option to turn off the reply-to-all feature.
If I’m emailing a bunch of people in my family and they can’t see who’s on the list, my brother could accidentally reply and divulge certain information about another family member to EVERYONE on the list without realizing it. This is BAAAD!!! And by itself, will prevent me from using the service.
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DG said:
I just signed up only to be disappointed that each “innner circle” group is limited to 50 email addresses. How is this much better than sending emails via Gmail or Yahoo, which allow 25-30 recipients per email? If you wanted to keep 200 people posted on the details of a large party (e.g. a family reunion), you’d have to create 4 separate inner circle groups!
