What Is It

Harvest Co-op is a new service that provides groups and businesses with a micro-blogging platform. That’s right, Twitter for business. The service fits into the same niche as the Yammer service, which won TechCrunch50 despite outrage from the tech community. While Yammer will cost you about $1 per month per member of your team, Co-op is free to sign up.

Why Do You Need It?

One study conducted at the University of California showed that workers spent a mere 11 minutes working on a given project before they were interrupted. Email pings, phone calls, and the standard cubicle visit are just a few of the productivity killers mentioned. Once interrupted, it can take 25 minutes to get back on track. Factor in meetings and lunch and it’s easy to see how little time one can spend actually working.

What Co-op allows you to do is see, at a glance, what your co-workers are up to. You can also see their daily agenda so you already know what’s on their plate. This means less random emails, less phone calls, and less impromptu visits to your desk. Most of all, this means a boost to your productivity.

Looking at past status message by day or week gives you an idea of what’s being accomplished. Co-op also integrates with your account on Harvest to track time spent on given tasks and projects.  It’s free to sign-up for Co-op, but the time-tracking feature ranges from $12-$90/month. To learn more, visit The Co-op Anatomy.