The Comm Tech Lab e-collaboration group studies existing tools and experiments with the integration of ecollaboration and traditional web site design.

Email was the first collaborative killer ap made possible by the Internet. Newsgroups and Listserves connect strangers with common interests, as do text and graphical chat rooms. Instant Messenging is the latest online collaboration tool to achieve widespread adoption, connecting family, friends and co-workers.

In contrast to these collaboration applications, exploring the web is usually a solitary user experience, void of other human presence even if 100,000 other people are concurrently reading the same web page. Browsing doesn't need to be solitary. Online learning, ecommerce, public relations, and museum/collection sites might all benefit from integrating ecollaboration in different ways.