New Features Released Today: Groups, User-to-User Messaging, and Facebook Status Integration

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.