At Linqia, we're blown away by the number and quality of conversations in online groups today. Our aim is to put a spotlight on these conversations and to harness the user generated content that lives within their walls. It's early days, but we'd like to share the journey so far...

Who and how are we helping

With over 40 million online groups in existence today, Linqia decided it was time to shed some light on this undervalued ecosystem.

Linqia's mission is two-fold:

- Help people and business to find and participate in online conversations that interest them

- Help group moderators/owners create more useful and engaging online conversations.

How are we helping people?

With Linqia, people will be able to do things like:

• Find the best online groups discussing hot new music, learning about the best new wines, and getting new parent advice.
• Digest conversations from multiple groups in one location. Rather than accessing individual groups to view update.

How are we helping group moderators?

Linqia is helping moderators connect with each other and create more engaging and interesting online group discussions.

How are we helping businesses?

With Linqia businesses will be able to do things like:

• Find threads in groups of more than 500 people discussing certain products or topics.
• See memes spread across the web as it happens.

How are we helping developers?

With Linqia, developers will be able to get access to this data and build powerful new tools that are not possible with proprietary website APIs, if they have one.

Linqia Labs

Linqia Labs is where we build our products. It's still early days and we're constantly refining what we've built. Here's what we have so far.

Group Feed

Linqia has taken the notion of data portability and applied it to the conversations being had within Facebook's public groups.

Rather than logging into all your groups individually, Group Feed provides a single access point to all the conversations that matter to you. This single view, combined with Group Feed's powerful filters helps you save time and hone in on the discussions that matter to you.

Group feed also lets you take an RSS feed of one or all your groups and bring Facebook into your favourite RSS reader.

If you have some groups on Facebook give it a try.

If you're a member of groups on Facebook give it a try. It's as simple as registering, connecting your Facebook account. And don't forget to let us know what you think.

And in case you're wondering, Facebook is just the start. We'll be adding new community platforms.

Check out Group Feed.

The Moderator Community

The success of online groups often lies in the hands of their creators. Yet to date these group moderators and owners have been provided little support.

So over the past 6 months, we've reached out to dozens of leading specialists and experts in online community management to understand how we can best serve the needs of these important people. As a result, we launched The Moderator Community.

Inside you'll find:

• Over 700 resources relating to the management and development of online communities and groups
• Specialist groups targeted to the different phases of the community building process
• Latest community management jobs
• A list of upcoming events globally relating to community management, social media and web 2.0

Check out The Moderator Community.

So what's next?

Linqia is also looking at ways businesses can harness the value of online groups. This involves:

• Allowing businesses to learn more about their customers by helping them listen to what's being said about their brands
• Creating better communications channels between businesses and relevant online groups