Review my startup: ShopTalk

#1

Post by jamwt » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 3:55 PM UTC

http://shoptalkapp.com

ShopTalk is team-centered chat software for companies.

It's based on the founders' experiences working at an organization that deployed IRC company-wide, including for use by non-technical departments.

ShopTalk attempts to retain the elements of IRC that we found to be very successful, like team- and topic-centered meeting rooms, always-on communication, searchable histories, automated entities (aka bots), etc. At the same time, we wanted to change/extend the IRC model to address limitations we encountered, like true user-level authentication and group support, fine-grained room permissions, LDAP/AD integration, web-based SaaS model instead of installed client/server, general usability issues, and more...

The current state of the project is an early beta--it's currently a simple, but usable, subset of the target product.

At some point in the future, when we're ready to come out of beta, we intend to charge per-user monthly fees to companies, and offer a free trial period of some duration. It's not an ad-based or freemium product, and we're not targeting giant-social-network-scale adoption. More "Enterprise 2.0", if you can stomach the buzzwordiness (hey, it's cliche, but succinct).

The geek angle: the backend is a combination of python and erlang, using myraid libraries that the founding team has put together over the course of working together for several years.

As long time HN readers and occasional commenters, we'd (jamwt, dowski, mrshoe) value and appreciate any feedback or advice the community has to offer.

Thanks for checking it out!

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#2

Post by jamwt » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 3:56 PM UTC

Clickable link: http://shoptalkapp.com

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#3

Post by chmullig » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 4:38 PM UTC

Excellent video. Does a great job of explaining how it actually works.

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#4

Post by jamwt » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 4:59 PM UTC

chmullig wrote: post #3

Excellent video. Does a great job of explaining how it actually works.

Thanks--it was an eye-opening experience, learning how much work goes into making these things.

I never thought I'd know anything about things like interlaced/de-interlaced video, renderable vs. real-time formats, and NTSC/PAL standards, but here we are...

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#5

Post by trickjarrett » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 5:13 PM UTC

Looks very useful, my question is what makes this better than say Meebo, or other in-browser chat solutions?

Frontpage design is clean but it doesn't feel smooth enough. It seems rather flat I guess.

What are your plans for monetization? Sell memberships? You have no mention of this on the site now, if that is your plan you should probably make that clear before a company gets set up with it thinking it will be free.

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#6

Post by jamwt » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 5:22 PM UTC

trickjarrett wrote: post #5

Looks very useful, my question is what makes this better than say Meebo, or other in-browser chat solutions? Frontpage design is clean but it doesn't feel smooth enough. It seems rather flat I guess. What are your plans for monetization? Sell memberships? You have no mention of this on the site now, if that is your plan you should probably make that clear before a company gets set up with it thinking it will be free.

I think meebo is an entirely different service. It's basically a web-based interface that allows communication on traditional IM protocols/networks, like OSCAR/AIM, XMPP/Google Talk, etc.

So, it's different in that it doesn't really provide company-specific networks, it makes traditional public IM networks web-accessible.

It also, like IM patterns in general, is one-on-one chat first, group maybe, in the kinds of workflow it promotes. If you've used IRC much, this is team- or group- oriented first, private maybe.

We tend to think this fits the real needs of workplaces better, because the group/team approach is more like a meeting (widely communicative, don't-repeat-ourselves, no secrets, etc) vs. hallway conversations (not well disseminated to all those who could benefit from it, inefficient from a repeating answers perspective, etc).

Thanks for the input on the frontpage. We're considering a redesign.

I mention monetization in the initial post. We're planning on charging per-user per-month fees to companies. Good point about being forthright about this; we should really give this thought, b/c we don't want customers feeling like we've pulled a bait-and-switch on them.

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#7

Post by anshul » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 5:37 PM UTC

Do you have an api or do you support some desktop/console linux clients? I prefer having a blinking icon in the taskbar when there is some non urgent activity demanding my attention and checking a browser tab every few minutes is inefficient.

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#8

Post by jamwt » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 5:42 PM UTC

anshul wrote: post #7

Do you have an api or do you support some desktop/console linux clients? I prefer having a blinking icon in the taskbar when there is some non urgent activity demanding my attention and checking a browser tab every few minutes is inefficient.

Ya know, this brushes against two things we've been doing/talking about.

In our experience, the hardest (technical) part of developing this product has been notifications. There is no good way for background web apps to notify you, especially visually, when there is some event that wants your attention. Something like growl for the web would be awesome.

Anyhow, we have plans for a public API (in fact, we've had a bot in our test channels before, exercising some early versions of it). Unfortunately, it's not ready to roll out quite yet. We know it will be important for all kinds of custom integrations.

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#9

Post by joepestro » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 5:57 PM UTC

trickjarrett wrote: post #5

Looks very useful, my question is what makes this better than say Meebo, or other in-browser chat solutions? Frontpage design is clean but it doesn't feel smooth enough. It seems rather flat I guess. What are your plans for monetization? Sell memberships? You have no mention of this on the site now, if that is your plan you should probably make that clear before a company gets set up with it thinking it will be free.

Looks cool, but while we're on the subject - what makes this better than the established players like Campfire (http://campfirenow.com/)?

Re: Review my startup: ShopTalk

#10

Post by trickjarrett » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 6:12 PM UTC

jamwt wrote: post #6

trickjarrett wrote: post #5

Looks very useful, my question is what makes this better than say Meebo, or other in-browser chat solutions? Frontpage design is clean but it doesn't feel smooth enough. It seems rather flat I guess. What are your plans for monetization? Sell memberships? You have no mention of this on the site now, if that is your plan you should probably make that clear before a company gets set up with it thinking it will be free.

I think meebo is an entirely different service. It's basically a web-based interface that allows communication on traditional IM protocols/networks, like OSCAR/AIM, XMPP/Google Talk, etc. So, it's different in that it doesn't really provide company-specific networks, it makes traditional public IM networks web-accessible. It also, like IM patterns in general, is one-on-one chat first, group maybe, in the kinds of wor…

I agree Meebo is, in truth, different. But on the surface and at the depth I think most people think about, they see browser chat and browser chat (not to be confused with ceiling cat).