"GroupieGuide" Gets Your Drinking Team Organized

Thanks to Mashable, we're trying out a new web service that makes it easy for groups to create websites to house their news, photos, message boards, and events. It's called GroupieGuide, and it recently launched a private invite-only alpha test.

From Mashable:

Chances are you either organize your own group or consider yourself a member of one. There’s a variety of existing options available for setting up an online presence for your group, but one new service aims to give groupies a free way to rally around each other with an instant website.

The site pretty much takes all of the hassle out of creating a fully-functional website to connect group members, promote events, facilitate discussions, and share photos. Essentially, it’s a website-in-a-box tailored just for groups. Administrative users just need to add a few group details, tweak the appearance, schedule an event, and they’ll have a nice looking group site they can call their own.

It looks pretty neat, though we haven't really done anything with ours beyond just signing up. We're guessing that many groups in Austin—whether you're a nonprofit organization, a bike gang, or just someone who demands to orchestrate the minutia of your friends' lives—might benefit from this sort of free service. It's similar to Ning, only with less of an emphasis on social networking and more on just getting your group's information presented in its own space.

If you'd like to try it out, we have 50 invites that you can use here (until they're gone). As far as we know, anyone who signs up gets 50 of their own to give away, too.