1 November 2002

GroupInterVisual™ Users' Forum launched at MyWebCommunitites

MyWebCommunities, owned by Richard Yendall, has its roots in community action. It is an innovative venture which offers bulletin board facilities to online groups. It currently boasts over 20,000 members. The founders of GroupInterVisual and of MyWebCommunities have had links over a long period, and have recently entered into a more formal alliance.

Richard experienced first hand how it is possible to empower large numbers of ordinary people through community action when he founded the website www.carpetbagger.com, during the wave of conversions, in the late 1990s, of U.K. Mutual Building Societies into banks. Through the power of networking via www.carpetbagger.com, members proposed Mutual Building Society resolutions and stood for election to their Boards of Directors. As a result, many ordinary savers discovered the leverage they had if they acted in unison, and benefited greatly from the financial windfalls that ensued when the conversions took place.

Since then, a network of online groups (www.mywebcommunities.com) has emerged under Richard's direction, based around shared interests in finance, mutuality, share trading and other such pursuits. Increasingly, these have been augmented by other interest groups based around themes as diverse as gardening and technology.

With the increasing popularity of the bulletin board and messaging services that constitute MyWebCommunities, Richard and fellow bulletin board moderators decided to expand the functionality of the facilities offered there. Amongst various enhancements, a GroupInterVisual Videoconference Community facility, enabling members to see each other face-to-face, seemed a logical next step.

Richard recalls how a year ago, when a MyWebCommunities investment club was set up, there was some concern arising from the fact that none of the club members had met each other, yet were hoping to develop sufficient trust to pay monthly subscriptions towards the club's investment portfiolio. "The ability to transact many of the conversations we have had face-to-face would have made the process so much easier," he believes.

Richard is excited at the potential the alliance with GroupInterVisual offers for enhancing communication within MyWebCommunities' online groups. In addition, he hopes that users of GroupInterVisual services who want to add bulletin board functionality to their online community will come to him with proposals for new bulletin boards: "We would encourage GroupInterVisual users to register at our site, get involved in dialogue, test the diverse functionality, offer feedback, and where possible create their own special interest group within MyWebCommunities. Our pledge is to try and offer a reliable, interactive platform and an enjoyable experience".

Ben Davidson, founder and Chairman of GroupInterVisual feels similarly: "Having known Richard over the Internet for a number of years, I am delighted to have entered into an arrangement that offers both ventures the opportunity to significantly enhance services to their users. I hope that GroupInterVisual users will visit MyWebCommunities forums and build on the strong tradition of mutuality that Richard has developed, by starting bulletin boards of their own there. I am also looking forward to welcoming users of MyWebCommunities boards to GroupInterVisual's network of Videoconference Communities. And most of all I look forward to users of GroupInterVisual's services developing a sense of their own identity as a large group, using The GroupInterVisual Users' Forum at MyWebCommunities. We want to make sure we use every opportunity to listen to users' experience and aspirations in relation to our technology, as the best basis on which to develop our services.

MyWebCommunitites' videoconference facility can be found at http://www.groupintervisual.net/hosting/MyWebCommunities/ and the GroupInterVisual bulletin board can be found at: http://www.mywebcommunities.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=122.