Preciate Inc., a social platform for businesses, today announced the launch of Preciate Social, its first virtual socializing platform for teams.

The platform was built from the ground up by Preciate to provide an immersive experience via the web to be as accessible as possible. It attempts to replicate the atmosphere of real-life business collaboration, events and parties with the ability to move among groups of people, including background chatter, spatial audio and visible webcam bubbles.

Previously in beta test mode, Preciate now has about 10,000 users from 1,700 companies such as Brock Solutions, the National Science Foundation at Emory University and Dyno Nobel.

“With the struggling economy and remote work becoming the new normal, companies and organizations need a tool that provides the value of in-person relationship building remotely,” said Ed Stevens, Preciate’s co-founder and chief executive. “Preciate Social is that tool. To create it, we thought critically about how to marry what research tells us about building and maintaining relationships and how to replicate business socials virtually. As a result, we have pioneered social presence technology, and are helping companies and teams come together.”

The emergence of COVID-19 has devastated the social economy for many workers along with companies that rely heavily on having people in offices. As a result, workers are undersocialized and don’t see one another except through Zoom calls. The concept of mixing and parties at during holidays are over.

The platform isn’t just for parties, of course. It can also operate as a sort of social space for unstructured gatherings that would be used for breakout groups during meetings. This is sometimes used for bringing ideas to groups during presentations when coworkers would be trying to share ideas with colleagues — before the pandemic forced everyone to do social distancing.

Preciate Social hopes to bring that back, at least in part, through its web interface with what it considers its unique communal experience. Within the same shared, virtual venue, everyone experiences what the company calls the three Ms of great socializing: music, mingling and making conversation.

“Physical distancing has been tough for the scientific community, especially for the ‘community’ part,” said Rio Febrian, lead researcher at the National Science Foundation. “We traditionally hold our biggest conferences in the Spring and Summer where scientists from around the world get to connect with each other during the breakout sessions.”

Although Preciate Social exists in this blurred space between the square Zoom/Skype webcam chat and the three-dimensional virtual reality spaces, it does allow people to float about in a 2D “mixer” where you can “bump” into one another in crowds. And with its spatial audio, this means that groups can form, disband and continue conversations as they see fit.

“Even when we tried virtual networking, it feels very unnatural,” said Febrian. “Preciate Social has been a great tool to bring my team and my network together again.”

Preciate’s basic account is free for all clients up to 50 people to socialize online. For companies that want additional features and customization, Preciate offers two additional subscriptions for $1 and $1.50 per month per user.

Image: Preciate