Indie 2.0

[Update (15 Feb 08, 01:16pm HK time): Cool PostIt-like way to track changes added to Backpack.)

[Update (13 Feb 08, 10:45am HK time) : "Messages" and "Newsroom" features added to Backpack.]

37signals just announced that their online “information manager” Backpack is now multi-user:

Backpack matures into a great business tool
There’s a clear advantage to a multiuser Backpack account: Backpack becomes a wonderful small business/group tool.

While Basecamp is great for managing client and internal projects, Backpack multiuser becomes a great tool for sharing information across your organization, centralizing knowledge, and a home base for all those little bits that everyone needs but no one can find. Since anyone with access to a page can add content, Backpack pages turn into collaborative blank slates.

So many of the things people use enterprise wikis (and formerly tried to use intranets for)–authoring content of multiple types for commenting and collaboration, tagging, notification/alerts, basic project managment and caledaring–for can now be done easily and elegantly in Backpack. Check it out. One main defining feature of wikis that Backpack can’t do: track multiple revisions in collaborative documents, including the ability to “roll back” to an earlier version. But 37signals’ Writeboard does exactly this. And Writeboards can be attached to Backpack pages.

So, voilà, new multi-user Backpack + Writeboard = good, easy to use SME wiki (with SSL). And it’s relatively inexpensive: US$5-US$14/user per month, depending on the plan.