Socialcast

Today we released a suite of new features that will help users find more relevant content inside their Socialcast communities. Several of these were suggestions from users like you, so keep those ideas coming!

Groups: Socialcast users can now create groups inside their communities to share information with others who have the same interests. Groups are public, so anyone can join and view the activity inside each group. Members will see activity posted to their groups in their Live Feed, bringing them a constant stream of relevant content about topics of interest to them.

User-to-User Messaging: Send messages directly to individual users by typing the “@” symbol in front of their name in the message box. This message will be public, and the recipient will see a highlighted message in their stream. You can also see messages sent directly to you by clicking on the “@username” filter in My Live Stream.

Active Conversation Filter: Read the most active discussions in your community by clicking on this link in My Live Stream.

Facebook Integration: Let Facebook update your Socialcast status by adding your feed URL from Facebook via the “import site” tool.

Gmail Chat/Google Talk Integration: Use your chat tools to update your Socialcast status. First, accept a friend request from the Socialcast chat bot. Once you do that, setting your Gmail/Google Talk status either from Gmail itself, or from chat clients like iChat and Adium, creates messages in Socialcast.

Let us know how you like these new features. How do they work for your organization? Let us know on Twitter via @timyoung.

Today Socialcast officially announced its partnership with True Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture firms. True’s investment of $1M, in addition to $400,000 from angel investors, will be deployed to help Socialcast make a rapid impact on the social business communications market. We are excited and proud to be aligned with True’s partners, including Om Malik of GigaOm, who will be sitting on our Board of Directors.

We believe that True’s experience, entrepreneurial focus and their belief in the vision of Socialcast will help us execute on a plan that will make our product more powerful, agile and useful for our customers. Because True is made up of former founders, they understand what it takes to run a successful startup. We’re confident that together, our teams will make Socialcast thrive.

We’re also excited to have Om as a Board member. Socialcast is his first investment at True, and ours is the first Board that he will sit on.

The next several months hold many changes for Socialcast, including a move to San Francisco and several new feature additions that will be coming soon. We’ll be moving fast, and we are excited for what the future holds.

Read the press release.