The social network approach is taking off in an increasing number of ways, and one of the ones gaining popularity is to use it to run your business. Joincube provides a social network platform that lets businesses and organisations work as a team, communicating and sharing information using tools that are said to improve time management by almost 40%. As one who finds constant meetings eat into time that could be spent productively I can believe this. Important though it is to meet face-to-face at times, it’s vital for businesses to realise the internet means it’s not necessary to call people over for a personal meeting for many types of communication.

No doubt a private social network platform is a good solution. This one has no sign-up fee, a free trial period for all levels of service subscription, and the subscription can be cancelled month by month. It’s not expensive, although a bit more than services such as ning.com and socialgo.com, so what does it add that these platforms don’t have? The answer is that it’s already tailor-made to run a business. Each user’s main dashboard gives an overview of everything happening, while file sharing facilities are designed for team business use and collaborative editing.

Task management features help organise work, while to-do lists, the ability to organise sub-groups for tasks, and ways of highlighting work to be done and marking it as finished or not finished, should all make the work go more smoothly. All the features of social networks are also there, including instant messages to keep in touch privately with team members, and microblogs where you update your status so everybody can see what the others are doing. Links to Wiki pages that everybody can update add an extra way of working together.

After the free trial period prices start at $24 per month for up to 15 users and 5GB of storage, with prices rising in stages to a maximum of $149 per month for an unlimited number of users and 200GB of storage. If users decide not to subscribe during the free trial period there will be no cost, and all levels of service include support, by email for entry-level members or faster methods for the high-end subscriptions. It’s possible to switch the names of users on the service so that a basic package could work if you only need to include up to 15 people at a time, and it’s also possible to downgrade as well as upgrade at any time.