Monday, April 28, 2008

All New Zanby

Announcing the all new Zanby! We have a new look and tons of new features. We even have a new mascot named Zee:


Zee

When you first go to the new Zanby, check out the tour links on the home page, they will give you a quick overview of the features.

Home page


Account Details
Ok, so that’s the new look, what about the services what’s changed?

Zanby is now organized into three levels of service, Individual, Group and Group Families (Patent Pending). It is always free to create an individual account on Zanby.com and it is always free to start and manage as many basic groups as you want. Users can pay to upgrade group host accounts to include premium services if they wish. Group Families are a paid service.

FREE

  • Individual Accounts
  • Basic Group Host Account

PAID

  • Premium Group Host Account
  • Group Families (patent pending)
  • Professional Group Families
  • Organic Group Families

Each level comes with a set of functionality that operates within that level, and also across all of the other levels.


What’s New
The design team has paid careful attention to the needs of our users gathered over the last two years of development. Below are high-level summaries of the different kinds of Zanby services.

Individual Accounts
At the individual level users will enjoy a rich, social media experience similar to Facebook or My Space. Individuals can use a very wide array of features common to social media applications to communicate, connect and create. Zanby's drag and drop template editor allows individual members to create a custom profile and adjust the content and look and feel to their taste. It is also easy to make friends, upload photos and documents, create lists, manage personal events, and track participation in discussions. Individual members can join as many groups as they wish and start as many free groups as the wish. Individuals may distribute their content to any level of Zanby at anytime by simply sharing it with a group or group family or friend.



Profile 1


Profile 2


Free Group Host Accounts
At the basic group level (one group host and one set of individual members), members can take advantage of an unparalleled suite of free organizational tools to manage their group activities.


Group Landing Page

Group Hosts can display group content through a drag and drop template editor, appoint co-hosts, adjust privileges and membership rules, manage documents, photos and lists. Communication in groups and group families are always managed through Zanby Discussion Server® which enables groups to create and manage custom email lists.

Discussion Server


Zanby Discussion Server is very similar in functionality to Yahoo Groups or Google Groups, except that on Zanby users can segment group discussions into as many different discussions as they wish, the discussions can be moderated much like a regular message board, and they can be merged at a later date with other groups and group family discussions. The free group level also includes a very robust events management system.

Premium Group Host Account
A Premium Group Host Account is directed towards larger groups, groups with a higher level of administrative activity, groups that need to be conscious of their brand, or groups that want to expand into several groups but maintain their organizational structure. Premium Group Host accounts have four important additional features:

  1. Premium Groups can adjust their look and feel of their home page with the Theme Editor.
  2. Premium Groups can publish the group home page out to another website. This feature works much like Blogger. Groups adjust the look and feel and content of the Home Page, set the publication settings and publish.
  3. Create and manage Committees with Zanby Committees. Create a sub-group of your group, set a range of visibility and administrative settings, assign members and chairs. Zanby creates a Discussion with a committee email account, a committee document folder and a committee roster to be used in creating committee events.
  4. Premium Groups can join group families. That is, they can merge with other groups while maintaining their original structure, to form larger organizations.

A Premium Group Host Account costs $13.00/month and applies to the host, not just the group. One Premium Group Host Account affects all of the account-holder's groups. There is no limit to the number of members that can join a group.

Committee

Premium Group



Zanby Group Families (Patent Pending)
Zanby Group Families are what make Zanby so different from other social media applications. At it's most basic level, a group family is a group in which the members are other groups, not people. This idea gives chapter-based associations, international businesses, or just groups that want to join together to achieve common goals the ability to share content and activities with great ease.


Group Family

Zanby Group Families are a paid service. There is a one-time start-up fee of $90.00 then a monthly maintenance fee that scales up or down depending on how many individuals are in the entire family.

When a group family is formed, all of the normal premium group tools are formed with it. However, all content from the member groups can be aggregated at the family level, from where it can be organized to suit the enterprise. This makes it incredibly easy to maintain an enterprise calendar, discussions, photos, lists, etc.

Start a Group Family


Additionally, the owners of a Zanby Group Family can create as many hierarchies of their groups as they need to represent the organization. For example, you might want to organize the family by Geography and you might want to organize your groups by function or brand or interest. That is completely possible with Zanby Hierarchy Designer.

Hierarchy Designer

Two kinds of group family – Organic and Professional
An Organic Group Family is owned by the member groups. Each group pays a monthly fee that is based on the total number of individual members in the family, then apportioned according to the number of individuals in the group.

A Professional Group Family is owned by one organization or individual. The owner of the family pays all monthly costs for the family. The owner of a professional group family may create groups within the family. Also, the owner of a professional group family can allow basic groups to join.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home