Content Circle’s basic concept is a familiar one. It lets you create multiple closed workspaces (it dubs them circles, of course), into which you can dump any kind of document. You can then invite contacts into the circle, so that they can view, contribute or edit the content depending on the role that you as circle creator assign them. Once in they can choose to be notified when content is added or changes, can add notes to documents, and use an in-circle IM system.
Yes, its another approach to doing away with the old e-mail attachment shuffle and there is no shortage of cheap and cheerful approaches; DropBox, Google Docs… or Sharepoint, if cheap doesn’t really appeal.
However Content Circles is unusual in it takes a peer-to-peer approach to the data and is written as a desktop Java application. So there is no central repository for the files, instead each member of the circle holds copy of the files locally in the application. Drag a file or folder into a circle window and the data is copied into the application and then synced across the network to the rest of the membership. If they are offline, then the data is synced as soon as they reappear, from whichever members are online. If everyone is offline, well it is possible to set up a machine as a dedicated store-and-forward server.
The application also hosts a real-time chat pane for circle participants as well as the ability to tag and add comments to files. Here's an annotated screen-shot from the company:
There are some nice touches - you’ll notice above that I said dragging a file on to the application copies it into the circle - so the existing file sits untouched on your machine. But what happens when the version held within CC is altered? First the application makes a new revision and keeps it with previous versions. Secondly it flags up that the version inside the application now differs from the original sitting on your machine and lets you update the original with a couple of mouse clicks.
Another nice touch is the application’s ability to link to Google Docs and Sharepoint servers, so that documents can be pulled in from those sources, edited collaboratively within Content Circles and the Synced back out.
Annoyances and questions
The 1.0.1 release has a few niggles in it: The Google Docs function won’t work for anyone in the UK or Germany simply because the application automatically appends @gmail.com to the end of username credentials. Fine, except that in the UK and Germany, Google is forced to use googlemail, not gmail. Content Circles says that this bug would be fixed in the next release.Will it work in a corporate enterprise environment? If Content Circles reminds me of anything at all, it is of a stripped down Groove. Groove was the brainchild of Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie and used a peer-to-peer approach to sync files, discussions, all kinds of data between clients. Now I haven’t used Groove since both it and Ozzie were snapped up by Microsoft in, so I don’t know how Microsoft Groove has evolved 2007 . But the original free app combined a lovely idea with a somewhat flawed implementation - it was bloated and syncing often worked, but sometimes didn’t, resulting in a lot of ‘could you re-sync at your end?’ IM conversations.
I wouldn’t want to paint CC with the Groove brush, but it naturally makes me cautious. Particularly since I haven’t tested it in a proper business environment so I don’t know how it copes with traversing firewalls or how it scales or how much network traffic a large installation dumps into the corporate LAN. These are all issues that can make peer-to-peer a pig in the enterprise and can cripple an apparently good idea. On the sync'ing side at least things look hopeful. Whereas the early Groove was purely peer-to-peer, Content Circle's firewall-traversing abilities are mediated by a "rendevous service" running on the company's own servers according to CEO Sri Chilukuri.
Another thing that will add confidence is the ability to see how others are fairing in the field. Content Circles doesn’t currently have a support forum for users to swap experiences, so you can't get an intuitive feel for how deployments are going. The company says that is set to change.
Subscription based pricing
Lastly, pricing. Content Circles is using a subscription model to sell its product. Passive “circle members” - users who merely want to partake in a circle - can use a free copy, but users who want the ability to set up new circles (be a “circle owner”) and use a few of the more sophisticated abilities such as Sharepoint integration will need to pay - $24.95 per month or $249.50 per year. New users get a 30 day trial period during which they can use all the facilites including circle creation.Personally, I don’t mind the subscription model when I’m paying for a service, but here the subscription felt artificial when I first tested the app - my personal preference would have been for a standard software license. However Sri Chilukuri argues that there is a substantial service element, with the important directory service (for authentication and security), as well as firewall traversal being dependent on Content Circle's servers.
You may be wondering what happens if you set up some circles, use them and then let the owners' subscription lapse. The answer - the circles are frozen; the content may be accessed, but no new content, tags, notes etc. may be added. Renewing the subscription, 'defrosts' the owner's circles once more. It's an interesting model and one that at least means that, should something befall this small company your content is at least retrievable.
This is definitely a company and a product worth watching.
