(2015-07-18) Mayfield Social Productivity Pingpad

Ross Mayfield coins "Social Productivity" as a Collaboration Ware segment. It’s a combination of Personal Productivity and Collaboration that empowers people... Is as simple, instant and social as messaging. So everyone can use and spread it. A lightweight, fast and easy way to get things done. Letting you work in Real Time with others. Ridiculously easy to form groups (Group Forming), and unlike a CC line, bordering on fun... I believe there will be a social productivity app on every consumer’s phone, and what emerges with groups of people will make the world more productive. At Pingpad, we are quietly making that social productivity app.

Sept23: PingPad has launched.

• He created Pingpad with his wife Leila Al Shamari — in fact, they said the idea first came to them when they were planning for their wedding, and they were struck by the lack of good options for planning together. (Other co-founders include Peter Kaminski and David Spector.)... Mayfield said the aim is to create a platform for all the things you need to “get things done as a group together.” That means Pingpad is designed around groups, rather than, say, shared documents. It could also mean the company will add more applications in the future.
• The app has three basic functions: notes, chat, and tasks. You log into the app and create groups. These groups can then edit notes together in real time, assign tasks, and chat with the group. It’s simple and built with social in mind... Pingpad is built around the presumption that the way we actually get things done will shift to Mobile... With this in mind, the main competition for Pingpad seems to be productivity apps like EverNote and Quip, which have lately tried to move in the direction of social. But Mayfield is adamant that the app that will come to dominate this category will be one built expressly with social in mind.
• Groups of contacts also can be formed quickly. Each group also has a chat channel to discuss notes and share links (and eventually photos), and the chat messages can be saved as notes as well, making them less ephemeral than in most Messaging apps... One likely target is colleges, where the app would be useful for sharing class notes, coordinating study groups, arranging roommate tasks and movie nights, and serving as a hub for clubs and organizations. And although it’s not focused on big enterprises, Mayfield thinks Pingpad could attract workgroups or departments inside smaller companies... Already, Messaging has started to become something of an atomic unit of many kinds of apps... Pingpad is aimed at first helping individuals create notes and lists for themselves, so it’s useful immediately even if friends or colleagues aren’t using it yet... Eventually, Mayfield plans to make money from add-on services such as greater data storage and more tools to manage groups (Freemium).