MindMeister is an online mind mapping tool that allows you to create, share and collaborate on mind maps. The MindMeister iPhone app that’s today available in the App Store was originally developed by Ultravague for the Mindmaker iPhone app and was then acquired by MindMeister in January of this year for an undisclosed sum.
MindMeister – a German-Austrian startup – felt the IPhone app would really give them a head start on developing their own app. And it looks like it has, because there are some key differences. Namely this new app supports sharing mind maps and also supports mindmeister’s “geistesblitz” or “brainwave” feature which allows you to insert those brilliant eureka ideas that you get when you’re in the bathroom into your default mind map on the mindmeister site. Perfect for the iPhone.
The old mindmaker iPhone app users will get a free update to this mindmeister app along with all the new features and if they open up a MindMeister account they will get the online and offline syncing features of the mindmeister platform.
MindMeister co-founder Michael Hollauf tells us the uptake so far has been good and they have new editing features such as collapsible nodes planned for the app, he reckons any future platform development on android, Symbian or blackberry would depend on the how the iPhone app does. He does see MindMeister as a collaborative tool for business so a blackberry app may also be a good idea – and the company is interested in hearing from people who would like to integrate MindMeister into their applications.
The company operates a freemium model and more advanced features like exporting to other mind mapping applications require at least a pro account. They currently have over 300,000 users with a third coming from North America and another third coming from Europe, the final third however comes from Asia and China in particular is a growth market that they access through their partner network. The company was initially funded by an undisclosed round of angel investment.
There are others in this space and the most notable is the desktop application MindManager from Mindjet which has been around for ages. And on the web we have bubbl.us and mindomo. MindMeister has some things going for it such as the use of AJAX as opposed to flash hence no need for a player, the fact that they offer the ability to really collaborate on the mind maps as opposed to just sharing them, exporting to MindManager on the desktop makes sense and it’s very easy to use.