Boston-based social web startup Wiggio makes it easy to connect, collaborate, and work in groups. The company has developed a free product they’re describing as ‘what Google Wave should have been,’ and today announced its version 2.0 release on top some hefty 2010 user growth.

Every day you check a plethora of devices and accounts to stay up to date and communicate about everything you are involved in. Class projects, family, local politics, greek life, groups and clubs, teams, charities and more: Wiggio is built for someone who manages one or more of these.

With Wiggio you start by creating a private list-service and web address for your group. Here you can host web meetings, conference calls and chatrooms. The page also includes a shared calendar to manage events, complete with the ability to create to-do lists and assign tasks. From this group you can upload, create and manage files in a shared folder, and even send mass emails, poll requests, as well as mass text and voicemail messages.

So just how much use are people getting out of the free Wiggio platform? Is it easier to use than Google Wave? According to Jerry Brown’s Gubernatorial race in California as well as over 700,000 users (up from 350,000 the beginning of 2010) – lots of use and yes.

“Working at the county-level for the Jerry Brown Gubernatorial race in California, it was important that we had a tool that allowed us to effectively communicate with several thousand volunteers,” said Jared LS Dearing, Ground Operations Manager, Jerry Brown for Governor 2010 in a press release. “While Yahoo and Google groups might have met some of our needs, from the perspective of functionality, we would still need to find outside supplemental resources. With Wiggio, we found one collaboration tool that fulfilled all of our needs and more.”

According to the company, the key new Wiggio 2.0 features – including an iPhone app — are:

• Robust Toolkit: Each group has access to group emailing, calendaring, file sharing and editing, polling, audio and video conferencing, mass messaging (SMS and voicemail), task tracking, and more.
• Communication & Collaboration: These features can now be used in a “one-off” or “ad-hoc” manner, with any assortment of individuals, not just within an existing group. For example, start a videoconference just by adding email addresses of participants, or post a file and share it with any grouping of individuals.
• iPhone Application: Users will be able to keep track of their groups on-the-go (coming next month)
• Feed Updates: A user’s group activity is now aggregated and shown on a personalized feed, making it easier to manage and keep track of multiple groups at-a-glance.
• Universal Search: The application now supports full search and filtering capability by keyword, by referencing specific people in groups, by discussion thread and by association with a particular person.
  
  

“Wiggio offers a next generation communication tool without the complexity and hassle – our goal is to keep Wiggio dead-simple to use. Even the least tech-savvy people in your groups should be able to get in and start contributing,” said Wiggio CEO Dana Lampert.

“Users can view a chronological thread that incorporates all of their groups’ activities, add the members they want, and start communicating – the entire experience is frictionless and takes less than a minute. Wiggio provides a strong alternative to what the industry promised, but failed to deliver with Google Wave, in a simpler, more streamlined version of that effort,” explained Lampert.

Wiggio initially launched in 2008 focusing on the college market, and is cofounded by Dana Lampert (then a senior at Cornell), and Derek and Rob Doyle. The company raised $450k in Angel from father Bob Doyle, who is the creator of the first desktop publishing program (MacPublisher) and the 1970s game Merlin. More recently in May 2010 the company landed a $2.1 Series A from New Atlantic Ventures.

Academic group, charity, business, sports team, family, charity or other club – give the new Wiggio a test drive and let us know what you think!

Check out Wiggio’s “claytorial” below to learn more about how Wiggio can help you: