The San Francisco based social groupware provider Grou.ps announced today that it has secured a Series A round of financing for $1.1 Million in a deal led by Golden Horn Ventures. Grou.ps has also announced that it is open sourcing a restricted version of its code under the Affero Public License.

Grou.ps aims to provide users with a comprehensive set of tools to collaborate online and currently has about 200,000 active users worldwide.

Going Open Source

In open-sourcing its application, Grou.ps is following in the steps of a growing number of formerly closed source online services that have decided to go this route lately, with Reddit probably being the most prominent one. Grou.ps argues that this move will allow them to commoditize the Grou.ps platform and give them a competitive advantage to hire the most talented programmers from the pool of open source contributors.

However, opening up the code is not a panacea for developers by any means - while some programs flourish once a lot of developers get their hands on the code, others have a hard time developing an active developer community around their open source offerings.

Grou.ps' closest competitor, Ning, has a considerably larger user base and offers a very similar service. However, while Ning has advertising on its pages, grou.ps does not - though you can add your own AdSense code to the site. Ning, so far, has raised about $104 Million in four funding rounds.

Disclosure: Grou.ps founder Emre Sokullu has been a contributor to ReadWriteWeb in the past.

For a power user, whose searches generally take a form like "term" + "quote" -term site:something.com it may seem silly to try to create a forum for every search term -- surely there won't be enough overlap to create stimulating conversations. For many terms, there probably won't be, but recall that when Jason Calacanis launched Mahalo last year, he said that the top 10,000 search terms account for about a quarter of all searches. With that in mind, Similarr makes more sense.

Similarr also has intent on its side. Google taught us that text ads on search results work because the searcher is showing intent by seeking out information on a specific subject. That concept could work in Similarr's favor -- people may be more apt to join a discussion about a topic they are specifically searching for information about. But in the immediate future, the site faces a chicken and egg problem. While people may be happy to join a discussion already in progress, not many people are likely to want to initiate discussions on an empty forum. Like Mahalo, Similarr may need to pay contributors to seed discussions on forums for top searches.

One thing the site should do, is figure out a way to combine -- or cross post -- to forums for similar topics. For example, a forum for "Tiger Woods" should probably show posts for the search "Tiger Woods injury" or "Tiger Woods knee surgery" as well. There is a lot of overlap in the list of the top 10,000 searches, slight discrepancies in search terms but people are generally looking for the same thing. Similarr needs to figure out how to combine alike searches into a single forum, which will not only be useful to users of the site, but will also automatically seed content in forums for less common search terms that fall under the umbrella of a more common term.

The embedding feature lets you now add a Tangler forum to any web site, blog or social network profile, using the provided embed code. Others can join in the forum in real-time by clicking on the "Join" button beneath the forum window.

The first time you join a Tangler forum somewhere on the web, you have to create a username and password and then confirm your account via a link sent to you in an email. After that initial process, you can join a Tangler forum just by using the "sign in" link with no need to leave the web site you're on.

Already, people are coming up with some creative uses for Tangler. For example, the 2 web crew posted a Tangler forum under their Ustream window in order to facilitate live real-time chatting among their viewers.

Nokia even used Tangler in their NSeries launch last week, having previously used Meebo Rooms. Tangler says that Nokia decided to go with them instead "due to the depth, SEO and permanency that a forum provides."

Testing it Out

One problem I had with the service is that, even though I was signed in, when I went to create my new forum, it did not recognize me and I still had to fill in the blanks to "create a new account." However, when I got to the email address field, it recognized my email address and then prompted me to sign in. After this second authentication, I was able to proceed with forum creation.

Once I got through that stumbling block, creating the forum didn't even take 10 seconds, and was simply a matter of filling in a few fields on the page like forum name, whether it's public or private, etc.

To share a forum, you first must create a topic within the forum and then click the "share" link in the top right of the window. With the provided code, you can then embed the forum on any web page. Specific instructions for Wordpress and TypePad users are available.

A sample Tangler forum is embedded below as a demonstration:

The Search Engine forum is open to Alt search engines on an invitation only basis. With an introductory price of $49 per year, it will provide several benefits for its members. CEOs can have private conversations or participate in forums relevant to many alternative search engines. The monthly Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list will be posted in this forum prior to being published live on the blog. Special announcements and invitations that are not appropriate for general posting can be shared confidentially within the forum.

In the second forum, open to any reader, members can also participate in private and group forums. Special news such as private beta invites, will be offered to forum members prior to general posting. There is also a Conference Calendar with the most comprehensive display of search and tech related conferences available anywhere, with over 100 conferences world wide currently listed. Another feature is "Ask Charles" where readers can email a question directly to editor Charles Knight and receive a private email response.

The membership fee is $5.99 per month, or $49 per year. There is a 30 day free trial for all forums.

The third foum is for AltSearchEngines' international advisors who provide the global search engines and bilingual posts for the blog. While this is also by invitation, there is no fee for the international volunteers. In this way, advisors from all over the world can meet and interact in one location. A virtual United Nations of Search!

AltSearchEngines and Near-Time will be rolling out additional features during the year to continuously add value to joining the forums. ReadWriteWeb readers can click here to sign up for the 30 day free trial.