Zwiggo touts itself as a group collaboration tool where you can share photos, posts, calendars, favorite books, chats, files, to-do lists, date planners, yellow notes, maps, list voting, forums and bookmarks. It does not integrate with Twitter or Facebook, and its API is already free and open to developers. With a clean, easy-to-use interface, Zwiggo is poised for new users. Now, it just needs to decide who those users will be.
Zwiggo’s mainstay is Spaces, which can be made private (only to you), public (open to everyone, anyone can join) or customized to specific friends that you can easily invite. These spaces feel like the offline version of a white cube gallery that has yet to be named or formed.
Facebook is increasingly focused on integrating reading and music into the social space, making it less about your friends and more about sharing content. If you miss the actual social aspect of Facebook, moving your closest friends to Zwiggo could be a great alternative.
Zwiggo feels like a less noisy way to plan meet-ups, trips or even a book club for friends. The flexibility of spaces make this perfect for small, tightly-knit groups. It’s similar to Glassboard, a free app that you can use to share privately with groups.
Zwiggo Developer Maurice Sikkink had groups of friends in mind when he built the site. “It started out as a Google Circles thing, a social network to make groups of friends,” he says, “but then then we decided just to focus on groups.”
Spaces resemble Circles conceptually, but because Zwiggo is not a social network, the similarities stop there. On Zwiggo, Spaces give groups a more private space in which to convene.
On the other hand, Zwiggo could also go the way of a business collaboration tool, morphing into something like Jive or SocialText.
In its current state, Zwiggo is a collaboration tool best suited for a small development team. Regardless of where it goes next, Zwiggo’s clean design makes it attractive to both businesses and groups alike.
