Launched a couple weeks ago, eDirectree is a new service that lets a user create their own rich wiki group for their friends, team, colleagues, families, or wherever a group of people need a space on the Internet. Founded by Mountain View-based attorney Raj Abhyanker and Dongxia Liu, the site aims to enable a new way of organizing groups and help people make their groups available to the people who matter to them.
You can build your year group by providing a photo and tagging faces out of them, or filling out a table with their First Name, Last Name, E-mail, and something interesting about them. Your group wiki can have photos, videos, a message board, and you can push out the data via e-mail, RSS feed, posting to outside blogs, or embedding your group’s photo to any place on the Internet.
While such a service may seem like a compelling option for sports teams and any group of people who need to connect in a such a way, which it is, I really think with the space itself — or the niche — has long been fulfilled with the Facebook Groups application. Everyone has a profile and has used Facebook so the implementation and introduction process is really a no-brainer, and the application itself does all the things a group might need to organize itself on the Internet.
But of course, this isn’t to say the problem has been solved completely. If the folks at eDirectree are able to come out with a Facebook app that is better than Facebook’s own solution and which adds value in other ways — they still might have a strong chance of conquering the group niche. However, without a marketing plan, it’s going to be tough for them to gain interest and usefulness without adapting to an existing platform.
