FlockPod 1.0, your social interaction pod is now out of Beta. FlockPod will now be available as a subscription service. Organizations can set up and manage their own subscriptions which will enable their employees, partners and customers to interact in unique ways using FlockPod. However, users can set up their own FlockPods for free if they expect to have limited members in the group.

Considering the crying need for content moderation in user-generated content, the FlockPod software now allows Administrators and Pod Managers a variety of privileges for deleting, archiving and blocking at source unwanted content. This keeps the social collaboration spaces clean and free of unwanted clutter.

FlockPod has also announced support for single sign-on, making it convenient for users to switch pods easily, once a user is “on FlockPod”. To be “on FlockPod”, a person signs in using a FlockPod account, which is completely free.

We are excited to bring the benefits of self-service administration and content moderation to large user groups, who need to do the heavy lifting with FlockPod. At the same time, we continue to offer FlockPod free to other user groups with limited size.

The new FlockPod also supports additional interactions for social search and question-answers. To enable this, we have 2 new Flocktivities in this release -

• Tag Cloud: Tag Cloud implies shared search. Share your search words on a certain topic with fellow Pod Flockers and also get to know what others are searching.
• FAQ (frequently asked questions): Ask questions to which other Pod Flockers can answer. Rate answers. Add tags to your questions to categorize them.

With the launch of FlockPod people for the first time came across a tool that encourages collaborative thinking and informal learning On-the-Spot (right within the content itself). People can simply subscribe to FlockPod and embed this visually stunning widget on absolutely any webpage with just a single line of code! The first Beta release introduced the concept of a Flocktivity (social learning interaction) with its 'Debate' flocktivity, and the importance of collaborating On-the-Spot for better learning outcomes.

Now, with the latest Beta 1.1 release of FlockPod you can:

• Contribute, Collaborate, Consolidate with two new Flocktivities - Spot Polls and Link Sets. In this release of FlockPod two addiional Flocktivities have been added to provide a consolidated view of information and aid collaborative research.
  
  
  • Spot Polls: Voice your opinion and also find out what others think, without leaving what you are reading. View consolidated results in different formats such as, Pie chart or Table.
  • Link Sets: View relevant links or add new ones, to guide the group's learning process, sort of a shared bookmarking area. Also, describe and rank links by relevance to the course.

  While discussions and debates are absolutely essential for collaborative learning, they might not always be sufficient. The idea of FlockPod is to provide Pod Flockers with different Flocktivities so they can pick the right one for their learning needs. So stay tuned… still more exciting Flocktivities to come.

• Control over participation with two types of FlockPod - Public and Private. Pod-owners have the discretion to decide who should be allowed to collaborate in their FlockPod. Depending on the nature of the discussion and the content in which the FlockPod is to be embedded pod-owners can decide whether to make it Public or not.
  
  
  • Public FlockPod: Any visitor can participate with just FlockPod Account
  • Private FlockPod: Access is by invitation only (from the Pod Owner) and requires a valid registered user name and password for login.

  To add a FlockPod to your site just write to info@flockpod.com.