Flowgram is a free online application that allows you to put together presentations that combine and annotate digital context such as web sites, photos, documents, RSS feeds, and background audio. I spoke with Abhay Parekh, the CEO at Flowgram, and he provided a tour and explanation of this useful application. It does not require you to download anything and works with any browser that includes the Abode Flash Player plugin.  Here is the start page where you can see the available choices for content sources.

I found several things very interesting. First, the pages you add are live so you can interact with them. Second, you can annotate these pages. The screen shot below was taken as we looked at my Portals and KM blog within a Flowgram. You can see an annotation note in the upper right. You can also highlight sections, as shown in the screen shot. In addition, you can provide an audio voice over to the Flowgram and have the highlights timed to the correct part of the audio so that Flowgram takes you to that section as it is discussed.

It is easy to share a Flowgram. You can email it or embed a Flowgram widget in your site or blog.  You can also post a Flowgram in a number of content sharing sites. See the content sharing screen below.

Abhay said that in today’s web of expanding channels too much content is siloed.  At the same time, only parts of a web page or other content source are relevant.  You also need to be able to provide your message and focus when sharing content. You can do this somewhat in a real time webinar with screen sharing but it is hard to do it asynchronously. This is the need that Flowgram is designed to address.  You can make your Flowgrams public or private. You set up a Flowgram profile and the public Flowgrams appear on this profile. In addition to creating and distributing aggregated content, you can measure reactions to your Flowgrams.

We discussed business uses inside and outside the firewall. It can certainly be used for marketing purposes on the web. Inside the enterprise, I see the potential for both communication and education.  While the tool was initially designed as a consumer application, Abhay said that they are already seeing business uses. Over 70% of their users are over 30.  The tool is free for now, as they want to encourage experimentation and get feedback. There will always be a free version.  They also plan to offer a subscription-based application with more features and greater security.

Flowgram is a San Francisco based firm that was started in February 2007. They released their first public beta on August 24, 2007. The well-known blogger Joi Ito is one of the angel investors. I think they have a good future on the web and in the enterprise.  You see a Flowgram introducing Flowgram at their site.  There is also a Flowgram blog.