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Grove.io shutting down

grove.io

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Re: Grove.io shutting down

#81

Post by robbiet480 »

pbiggar wrote: post #78
dchuk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're using Campfire currently, and had used hipchat before that for a few months. Hipchat was fine on desktop, but holy shit their mobile apps are terrible. They were so bad that we had to move away because we're a fairly mobile group. Honestly, the group business chat niche is just riddled with "incomplete" products in my opinion. Some are great in the browser but have no native web apps (Flowdock), some have shitt…

To be honest, I expect that team to be hipchat. They've got cash now since their acquisition, and they're making steady improvements to their desktop app. Personally, I wouldn't enter this market, regardless of how good my devs or how much money I had. There are at least 3 polished and loved products. The problems you describe will probably be fixed before another team could come in with a good solution.

Just because there are at least three other services out there means you can't also enter the space and try to disrupt it still?

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#82

Post by pbiggar »

robbiet480 wrote: post #81
pbiggar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I expect that team to be hipchat. They've got cash now since their acquisition, and they're making steady improvements to their desktop app. Personally, I wouldn't enter this market, regardless of how good my devs or how much money I had. There are at least 3 polished and loved products. The problems you describe will probably be fixed before another team could come in with a good solution.

Just because there are at least three other services out there means you can't also enter the space and try to disrupt it still?

Campfire is made by a company with a massive and rabid following, and is cross-sold to the users of three other popular products, two books, and a massive blog.

Hipchat is an amazing product which is steadily getting better under the steam of great developers. It is also owned by Atlassian, a company with great execution and a strong track record of successful cross-selling.

So under these circumstances, no, I personally wouldn't enter this space.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#83

Post by dasil003 »

chank wrote: post #10
gkoberger wrote: post #2

This is disappointing. Grove.io was really awesome. IRC channels seem easy, but are (relatively) hard to get going: - Finding a server - Registering it properly - Explaining it to non-tech people The last one is way harder than you'd think. With Grove, you just send them a URL and it's easy. It's a shame they're shutting down. I stopped using because it was too expensive for a channel with a few friends (a channel wi…

Yea, but that last one wasn't worth the cost and the user limit. Most groups using IRC in this fashion probably have a high level of technical experience. Campfire succeeds at this because it wasn't their first product. They essentially brought customers in from their other products and then tied them all together. As a stand alone service, it's fairly useless IMO.

Campfire is the only 37s service that has been sticky for my team.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#84

Post by mibbitier »

BadassFractal wrote: post #8

On that note, any good guides for hosting your own IRC server on your home network (and safely expose it to the Internet) if you have a spare Ubuntu server box lying around?

I'd suggest against it personally. Get a $10 linode and setup an ircD there.

If your home network gets DDoS'd, it's going to be quite an inconvenience.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#85

Post by _neil »

jonursenbach wrote: post #58
crag wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No NO.. it's not because they're small. It's because tech start-ups have a history of shutting down or selling, and leaving their users in the dust. The list is long. Another recent example was Sparrow. I broke my rule about buying/licensing software from small companies (unless I got the source) with Sparrow. I didn't just buy 1 copy, I (we) brought 15 (for the office). And of course, I got burned. Again. It will no…

Did you really get burned with Sparrow though? You bought software, not a service. Them being bought, and shut down, by Google has zero effect on you given that you can continue to use their software. Forever.

According to a friend, the most recent version of Sparrow is essentially broken (100% CPU and crashes). I haven't upgraded in a while for this reason, and I'm not expecting that issue to be fixed, ever.

That said, I'm still using Sparrow on my laptop and desktop machines as well as my iPhone. But probably not for a whole lot longer.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#86

Post by mibbitier »

pbiggar wrote: post #69
lhnn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have time to drift down off that horse you're on and give the guy a break. So what if he's judging someone? He made a valid comment about the fact that this person supposedly consistently lets users of their startups down.

I'm pretty happy up on this horse. Acting like that to people is not OK. Calling it out as a dick move is the way to combat it. You say "supposedly" but you just assumed it was "valid". So without evidence or context, you took him at face value and now assume bad things about the person in question. That's why it's a dick move.

* Pownce - shut down * Convore - shut down * Grove - shut down

I think the guy is really just telling facts. Unfortunately, it means that the next project may have users worrying about when it'll be shut down. (There were actually comments to that affect when grove was announced on HN).

Also, I think the underlying issue here is that none of those services cost anything to run, so they seem to have been shutdown because of other factors - perhaps a lack of ability to see things through.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#87

Post by mathrawka »

I remember trying it out when it was free, and then I got a notice about the pricing plans. I emailed and said that the prices were outrageously expensive for just a few users. I never got a reply, but I got an auto-reply a week later telling me to fill out my billing info.

They put the service out there, and didn't really listen to much feedback or improve it. I was rather disappointed and find this ending... expected.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#88

Post by tijs »

jonursenbach wrote: post #58
crag wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No NO.. it's not because they're small. It's because tech start-ups have a history of shutting down or selling, and leaving their users in the dust. The list is long. Another recent example was Sparrow. I broke my rule about buying/licensing software from small companies (unless I got the source) with Sparrow. I didn't just buy 1 copy, I (we) brought 15 (for the office). And of course, I got burned. Again. It will no…

Did you really get burned with Sparrow though? You bought software, not a service. Them being bought, and shut down, by Google has zero effect on you given that you can continue to use their software. Forever.

"Forever" being until Google changes their service which is probably about every few months.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#89

Post by DanielRibeiro »

I wonder what they will do next. Grove.io started out of Convore(YCW11)[1], announced just 249 days ago[2, 3, 4].

[1] http://gigaom.com/2012/01/10/convore-grove-io/

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3449917

[3] http://betakit.com/2012/02/20/convore-shutting-down-april-1

[4] http://blog.convore.com/post/17951919109/convore-shutting-do...

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#90

Post by redguava »

dchuk wrote: post #71
sown wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could create things that people might actually want but I can't think of anything that I could make that people would want.

The vast majority of the time, if you build something that scratches your own itch, there will be others out there that will also find it useful. The challenge is to find a big enough itch.

I always find this to be terrible advice. Most programmers have similar itches, if you scratch your own itch, you are going into a lot of competition with many other developers. Why not solve a problem for an industry that gets much less attention? Maybe success rates would be much higher if we stopped all building the same things.
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