A Comment on Asana

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was quoted in an article appearing in the E-Commerce Times, written by Erika Morphy, and entitled Asana Positions Itself for the Enterprise. In case you're not familiar with Asana, you can click on the link to see their website.  Basically, it's software to help you get organized, and especially to help groups and organizations work together on projects.  In their own works, "Asana is the shared task list for your team. The place to plan, organize & stay in sync." It's productivity software, and here's a YouTube video that provides an overview of its features:





Anyway, the E-Commerce article focused on a new product released by Asana called Organizations, which is, in effect, Asana writ large. To quote from the opening summary of the article, which was posted on May 2nd, Morphy writes

Asana has stretched its simple collaboration tool to enterprise dimensions with Organizations, which allows users to network in a way similar to Facebook. "Email seems clunky and old-fashioned to people who are native to social networks," said journalism prof Rich Hanley. "They understand that they communicate in short bursts of information ... that can carry links to deeper content if desired."

And the article itself begins with the following explanation:

Asana on Wednesday announced Organizations, a feature that stakes its claim in the enterprise space.

What is new with Organizations is its scalability; it is designed to support companies of 100 employees or more.

The startup has already carved out a niche among individuals and small groups in the 18 months since its launch.

Asana's original productivity and collaboration application is organized around three panes: On the left are the projects in the current workspace. When people are added to the team's workspace, they get access to all of the projects. The name of the selected project is in the center pane, along with a checklist of tasks for that project. The right pane can be expanded to edit task details like the assignee, due date, and comments.

At this point, a new section begins, with the heading of "All About Organizations," providing more detail about the new product:

An Organization is broken down into Teams, which are listed in the left pane in the Team Browser. Users have a number of options to control the membership and visibility to others.

Organizations also offers a single view of tasks and a single in-box, as well as the ability to search across the entire Organization and save that search.

The free version offers unlimited projects and tasks, as well as unlimited Teams with up to 15 members each.

A premium version lets users designate admins for an Organization, who can configure some security settings, manage users and centralize billing. Admins also can see account activity, remove users from the Organization, and require access to Asana through Google Accounts.

The Asana premium plans allow private projects, public and private teams and unlimited guests, and they come with a higher level of support.

Organizations is available to all Asana users. Over the next few days, existing teams will be able to convert their Workspace to an Organization.

The next section, entitled "A Simple Concept," gets into the fascinating fact that this software was created by individuals who came from Facebook and Google.  At this point, the article features some quotes, but not yet from me:

Asana was launched by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and Google and Facebook veteran Justin Rosenstein.

There are more than a few similarities between Asana and Facebook, said Rich Hanley, associate professor and director of the graduate journalism program at Quinnipiac University.

"Asana is simply applying the concept of a network of friends to a network of colleagues," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"That means teams that need to communicate in real time and keep track of the conversation can deploy techniques that are common in their everyday life to make their jobs more efficient," Hanley said.

"Email seems clunky and old-fashioned to people who are native to social networks. They understand that they communicate in short bursts of information similar to Facebook's news feed that can carry links to deeper content if desired," he explained.

The last section has a heading of "A Powerful Engine," and this is where I come in:

Asana is more than just another productivity tool with social media aspirations, however.

"Asana offers the collaborative power and advantages of cloud storage that Google has been trying to emphasize, combined with the social media expertise of Facebook, to provide a truly effective and efficient alternative to both platforms, one well-tailored to this relatively specialized niche," said Lance Strate, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

"What I wonder is how Microsoft will react to Asana, given the powerful pushback we've been seeing from them against Google," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"No doubt there will be enormous interest in buying out Asana on their part," suggested Strate, "and perhaps also from Facebook and Google -- and maybe even Apple will want to get in on the act."

Now, since I provided my quotes via email, I can share with you the entirety of my comments, so you can see all that I had to say, and get a sense of the larger context of my quotations:

It's often the case that individuals who have gained great success with a big, mainstream project follow it up with one that is more specific and specialized, and this is the case for Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein's move from Facebook, as a kind of "everything" platform, an internet within the internet essentially, to a business and organization-oriented form of productivity software. What is particularly interesting about this move is its similarity not to Facebook but to Google, and in particular to the failed produce, Google Wave. While Google recently folded Google Docs into Google Drive, and has been competing with Microsoft Office in trying to get organizations to switch to a cloud based system, Google has always had some difficulty with the social media aspect of online communication, Google+ being their most successful offering to date, but still not enough to keep Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues at Facebook up at night. Asana offers the collaborative power and advantages of cloud storage that Google has been trying to emphasize, combined with the social media expertise of Facebook, to provide a truly effective and efficient alternative to both platforms, one well-tailored to this relatively specialized niche. What I wonder is how Microsoft will react to Asana, given the powerful push back we've been seeing from them against Google. No doubt there will be enormous interest in buying out Asana on their part, and perhaps also from Facebook and Google, and maybe even Apple will want to get in on the act. If nothing else, this demonstrates how exciting and open-ended this industry is as we find ourselves in the latest internet boom.

I really thought the point about Asana picking up where Google Wave failed was an important one. Perhaps you remember all the buzz that was generated before its release, and while it was in beta? Everyone was clamoring for an invite back then, and afterwards, pffffttt! That's why I see Asana as stepping on Google's toes much more than Facebook.  And it does show how new media entrepreneurs can continue to get mileage out of simple variations on a theme. Of course, all the productivity software in the world won't do your work for you, at least, not so far...