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Grove.io shutting down

grove.io

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Re: Grove.io shutting down

#171

Post by jorde »

mh- wrote: post #111
jorde wrote: post #93

For those who liked Grove and its combination of IRC and web chat, I personally recommend Flowdock which also has an IRC interface https://flowdock.com/ I know the people behind Flowdock personally and know that they are going to be around for a long time. As a personal note, it's sad to see Grove go away. It was the first bigger service I got to design and I loved working with Leah.

can you point me to Flowdock's IRC interface? I evaluated them before we started adopting Grove, and I did not see that option. edit: dunno how I overlooked this before: https://www.flowdock.com/help/irc thanks for making me look again, though!

They added that afterwards

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#172

Post by polemic »

niggler wrote: post #151
sbarre wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Just because something should have paying customers doesn't necessarily mean that it has paying customers. There are other factors involved. Better put: are you a paying customer? If not, then most likely other potential customers are unaware.

Yes (well, employer was/is a paying customer).

If they're shutting it down because it isn't sustainable, that's fine, I don't expect them to run the service as a charity (we have freenode for that!) - but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#173

Post by nfriedly »

niggler wrote: post #151
sbarre wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Just because something should have paying customers doesn't necessarily mean that it has paying customers. There are other factors involved. Better put: are you a paying customer? If not, then most likely other potential customers are unaware.

Sociable Labs (my employer) is/was a paying customer of grove.io

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#174

Post by pbiggar »

mibbitier wrote: post #170
pbiggar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule That is laughable - as in it can't possibly be right. Can you provide a link to this? From campfirenow.com: "Over 100,000 people have used Campfire to send more than 60,000,000 chat messages"

Campfire was released in 2006, 67 months ago. 60,000,000 messages, over 67 months, works out at 895,000 a month - approx 28,000 messages a day. Or one message every 3 seconds. Campfire could be run from a single small VPS. I think it's entirely believable that the usage of campfire is that low. All credit to them, they've managed to get people to pay for something people don't actually use very often.

You can't just average them out - you think they have the same number of customers now as they did when they started?

Let's assume they doubled in size every year - I think that's a good if imperfect approximation. That would mean 30m messages sent this year, 80K sent today. A far cry for "a few thousand".

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#175

Post by heretohelp »

pbiggar wrote: post #161
heretohelp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really meant my point to be a counter to its parent. I don't believe I've ever seen you do anything else on HN. I know you to be a reliable person, no reason to think you'd suddenly get fickle and take something I said seriously. Do you mean to tell me that if somebody rolled up with a check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire and run for the hills? Realistically the only people who a…

> check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire > I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base So everyone else is just in it for the money, but not you? If you can believe it about yourself, perhaps you'd be willing to extend some of that credulity to others?

The track record of everyone else is very poor :)

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#176

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#177

Post by heretohelp »

pbiggar wrote: post #166
heretohelp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with the hagiography? Culver made things people came to depend on, then those things disappeared. I don't see how this is any different than picking up women and telling them you think they're serious girlfriend material in a context (business services) where that's the expected standard, then dropping them for the new hot thing. Why is it suddenly acceptable to do this just because they called themselves a st…

You're making statements which depend on information you don't have. How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing? Perhaps they weren't making money. Perhaps they were being destroyed by the two larger startups in the space? Why do you assume the worst of this company? The rest of your statements in this thread are really aggressive, and rely on very negative assumptions, which do not seem to have a bas…

>How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing?

Because that's what happened to her last six projects?

Are you completely incapable of inductive reasoning or are you being obtuse so that you can make the total unaccountability of SV founders a moral crusade?

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#178

Post by pbiggar »

heretohelp wrote: post #177
pbiggar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making statements which depend on information you don't have. How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing? Perhaps they weren't making money. Perhaps they were being destroyed by the two larger startups in the space? Why do you assume the worst of this company? The rest of your statements in this thread are really aggressive, and rely on very negative assumptions, which do not seem to have a bas…

>How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing? Because that's what happened to her last six projects? Are you completely incapable of inductive reasoning or are you being obtuse so that you can make the total unaccountability of SV founders a moral crusade?

Wow, that escalated quickly. Try to remember that you're talking to and about other people. Jumping to the worst possible assumption about other people is not a kind thing to do, but it's all I've seen you do in this thread. As a result, I'm out.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#179

Post by pwang »

whalesalad wrote: post #9
kenneth_reitz wrote: post #4

Shocking.

I feel/sense sarcasm. I did not see this being useful from day one.

I was a paying customer. I had other shit to deal with than setting up an IRC server with robust logging, and it worked well enough for our team (except the random disconnects).

I guess we'll be looking at hipchat and some of the other alternatives posted here.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#180

Post by pwang »

kenneth_reitz wrote: post #12
whalesalad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel/sense sarcasm. I did not see this being useful from day one.

It's sarcasm mixed with caremad. I was a huge fan of Pownce, Motion, LeafyChat, Baconfile, Convore, and Grove. All failed. I was really hoping this one would work, but after seeing no improvements in a year, it became obvious it wouldn't. :(

Yeah, Convore was fun. I'm sad it went away. (Not caremad, though - thanks, Kenneth; urbandictionary owes you a page hit today.)

But huge props to Leah for keeping at it... I'm disappointed at the haters on this thread taking personal pot-shots, instead of recognizing that her record shows an admirable perseverance and a true passion for building better messaging technology.

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