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Grove.io shutting down

grove.io

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Re: Grove.io shutting down

#141

Post by hzy »

_neil wrote: post #85
jonursenbach wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about your friend, but I'm happily using the latest version of Sparrow with no issues whatsoever, maybe he has some other unrelated problems...

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#142

Post by pilif »

tijs wrote: post #88
jonursenbach wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sparrow is essentially an IMAP client. I don't see Google turn off IMAP support any time soon. Way too many clients are actively using that.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#143

Post by StavrosK »

mmahemoff wrote: post #138
thedjpetersen wrote: post #31

Grove inspired me to make an open source alternative: Subway https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway . And while it is far from perfect it is a start towards opening up IRC to teams.

This looks good. Does it keep history? I think one of the benefits of web-based systems like HipChat and Campfire is you can log in and see the previous conversation even if you weren't there.

You can use bots for that:

http://instabot.stochastictechnologies.com/

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#144

Post by kevinprince »

mibbitier wrote: post #101
pbiggar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 person…

You're stuck in a bubble. Campfire gets a fair bit of attention here, but is unheard of outside the 'startup'/B2B space. The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule. Hipchat fills a hole as well, but there are literally thousands of different ways to spin 'webchat' and carve a big following out.

Massive market than is open for disruption. Especially when you consider the real incombent is Microsoft in most corporates.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#145

Post by rdl »

That has to suck for Leah, especially since there's definitely a worthwhile product somewhere in the team realtime communications space; maybe grove.io wasn't it, but I find team IRC and IM to be incredibly useful, and if there were a good way to combine the two (and some kind of wiki/logging/etc.), with security, it would be great.

It would be cool if there were a way to put systems in escrow in case a company tanks or pivots, to protect users. The time to fund and set that up is during development/normal use, not once you've run out of money and decide to shut down, though.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#146

Post by madflo »

pilif wrote: post #142
tijs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sparrow is essentially an IMAP client. I don't see Google turn off IMAP support any time soon. Way too many clients are actively using that.

I don't know exactly the protocols behind Exchange (IMAP ? MAPI ?), but it seems to me that it is, for now, Google's prefered way of accessing emails & calendars from a mobile device (at least from iOS).

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#147

Post by jonty »

mh- wrote: post #109
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.

you could start with a replacement for grove.io. heh. can someone recommend an alternative that also supports connecting via standard IRC protocol?

Try https://irccloud.com, just set up a channel on any public IRC server.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#148

Post by timjahn »

"...our team has moved on to other projects"

That's the part that gets me. I've seen this many times in other startup shutdown posts.

They say it so casually. Like this is just another extracurricular activity they do after school. If they're tired of basketball, they're going to stop and try hockey.

Except that's not how your customers view it. They're paying you money for a service they're using to presumably save/make money.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#149

Post by sbarre »

polemic wrote: post #95

Ugh, I don't understand how Grove.io can just drift apart like that. Surely Grove's costs were relatively low, and my impression was that there was a significant level of uptake. > "..our team has moved on to other projects.." So, unprofitable, or just not the next Facebook? Is there really no one that is happy to keep the service ticking along? I feel like there is a pretty significant problem with tech startups, wh…

I also wish they would address:

1) why not open source the project?

2) why not look for someone to take it over and run it?

I also have a hard time seeing how something like this could be at the very least not break-even (unless they had less than 10 paying customers or something).

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