Grapevine Exits Private Beta: New Communication Paradigm Available to Everyone

Grapevine allows users to go on with life and work while being 'tuned into' a personalized audio channel - a place where one can hear colleagues discuss a new idea one moment, and friends planning a night out the next. Users of Grapevine will always be within earshot of their important conversations.

London, UK and Denver, CO (PRWEB) August 3rd, 2010 -- Following a successful private beta, Grapevine is open to everyone, no invitation needed.

Grapevine is reinventing how voice communication happens, making it possible to always be within earshot of the most important conversations, wherever they may take place.

Grapevine is a customizable and effective communication platform for distributed groups where important conversations flow to the appropriate person.

New responses in a conversation are heard immediately and followers can choose which conversations are important, how open or closed they are, and who gets to hear and participate.

Users can follow existing conversations, create them and invite people, and discover what the office or community is discussing. The app will then relay conversations happening on any of those vines. Users can talk at any time, of course. If a part of the conversation is missed, users can always catch up later.

This allows users to go on with life and work while being 'tuned into' a personalized audio channel - a place where one can hear colleagues discuss a new idea one moment, and friends planning a night out the next.

Why Grapevine?

Over 90% of conversations in a typical office happen spontaneously. Most people have experienced the difficult process of building trust on a virtual team or have wished they could hear the tone of a terse or ambiguously worded e-mail.

It is no surprise that voice interactions express certain things better than text or visuals. Things like spontaneity, trust, expressiveness, immediacy -- vital ingredients of successful online collaboration and communication.

The reality is that phone calls and conference calls are not very effective. They require a participant’s full attention, both when engaged and when setting them up (phone tag, anyone?). And they offer no context, history or spontaneity.

In an age where communications with one’s team, friends, customers and even family are often more virtual than in person, there has to be a better way, and that’s Grapevine.

A few of Grapevine’s key features:

• Serendipitous discovery of communications: Find out what’s being talked about at work, home, or by complete strangers.
• Prioritize conversations: One’s top conversations flow directly to participants.
• Private spaces: A private Grapevine group place for creating, organizing, searching, and sharing vines.
• Open, public, private Vines: Customizable privacy
• Communicate in real-time, or catch up when you have the time: Talk and all those online will hear immediately, others can catch up later.
• Never lose a conversation: Keep the conversations that matter. Reference and share them as desired.
• Share knowledge around the workplace or personal groups: Collaborate and share knowledge with co-workers like never before.
• Keep up to date automatically: Effortless communications that makes sure everyone is on the same page.

What are people using Grapevine for?

Grapevine users constantly find new uses and ideas for Grapevine. Here are a few:

• Distributed teams collaborating throughout the day
• Students discussing assignments from traditional or online courses
• Doctors sharing information and experience on unusual or difficult cases
• Live chat with customers
• Showcasing music from cool up-and-coming bands
• Chatting together while watching the big game
• Audio micro-blogging
• Talking to friends and family overseas

About Grapevine:

Grapevine is a product of Open Air Innovation, a bootstrapped company founded in 2008. The award-winning core team consists of dedicated professionals with many years of experience in internet technologies, software and communications.

Grapevine development started for a simple reason. Finding ourselves in a world where interpersonal communication - both personal and professional - is increasingly virtual and group-based, we kept wishing voice communication tools would grow up and keep up.

Games of phone tag, rambling voicemails, broadcast conference calls and badly timed phone calls lost their charm long ago. Yet all those broken virtual teams, ambiguous emails and self-indulgent status updates made us certain voice - done right - still had a huge part to play.

Grapevine represents our take on 'voice done right'.