[11/17//2006 - version 2 adds BusyTonight, Submate, Vibely]

After reading the TechCrunch article on nascent activities-centered websites, I decided to take my own look at the activities space. I wound up examining nineteen ventures by the end. Their aims may seem too desparate to lump together in one examination. However, in the abstract, they all attempt to catalyze social interaction, and, technically, there are only a dozen or so features that they all try to implement in various combinations. For your visual stimulation, I've produced two graphics, one a venn-type diagram attempting to categorize each service and the other a feature set chart. My notes on the services should be read in order as later ones will build on earlier ones. I consider their major focus, ie their marketing position and the way they are actually used, not the subset of possibilities rarely or never tapped.
Read the rest of this entry »

Having examined a trio of recent entrants Pinger, Jyngle, and 3Jam in the multperson mobile communication space, I've decided to return to one of their forefathers, the colorfully named Dodgeball. This ambitious early experiment in social communication from NYC eventually caught the eye of Google, which gobbled it up May 2005 for an undisclosed sum. With the stability and support afforded by the acquistion, one would expect Dodgeball to be in the stratosphere with traffic today. In fact, the service still hugs close to the ground.

Why's it grounded? Dodgeball aspires to be too many things at once and before hooking an audience: it's okay to evolve new features with user momentum behind it but it's deadly to be muddled at the starting line. Friendster+Yelp+3Jam they want to be, unused they is. The probability p of each concept getting off the ground is low enough. Joint probability pFxpYxp3 ~ 0.

If we take the mobile-centric view, 3Jam by comparison is easy and open. If 3Jam's chatroom archetype isn't already embedded in your mind from IRC or Yahoo Chat experience, it is a design pattern with a good fighting chance with the uninitiated. Spinning new conversations is easy and unregistered recipients are full participants: I can include anyone with a phone number immediately in a convo and there's a decent chance they'll figure out how to participate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Next up is 3Jam. Since I reviewed Pinger previously, and the two services share similar ambitions and grapple the similar issues, each exploiting server side processing to foster group communication over the existing crude infrastructure, I'll bring up points of comparison as I go along.

3Jam, like Pinger, threads conversations and distributes messages to all parties in a group chat. Unlike Pinger, 3Jam traffics in SMS only, not voice. 3Jam's mobile interface to the service is an intuitive command set. Contacts can be added either through the web interface or from the phone. Unlike Pinger or Jyngle, 3Jam's web UI is only good for contact management and contains no messaging functionality, demonstrating focus on mobile to mobile communication.

3Jam Convos are Virtual Chatrooms

If you wanna think in OOP terms, a 3Jam (group chat) is like a server side object that gets instantiated when a registered user texts 3Jam (43526) with a list of contacts. The contacts are individual entries like "Mark Cuban" or "Michael Arrington" or a group like "HotOrNotGuys." Contacts are entered through the web interface or the phone. So an SMS sent to 43526 with "Text Mark Michael HotorNotGuys" will create a chat object with those guys (and myself) as participants. 3Jam will reply with an SMS informing that a "3Jam started with MarkC MichaelA JamesH and JimY." (The object would also have me in the chat_starter attribute.)

In a clever bit of engineering, that chat opening SMS message is sent from a five digit SMS shortcode distinct from 43526. Replying to that distinct short code broadcasts the SMS to everyone else in the convo. This system allows a 3Jammer to be in more than one chat group! The 3Jam convo is the primary object, not the message as it would be in email or Pinger; it is essentially a virtual private chatroom (think IRC or AIM).

Read the rest of this entry »

I tried the Jyngle service after a positive experience with Pinger and boy was I disappointed. It's surprising that for all the publicity these companies get that no one actually reports on the quality of these services. Deal info and CEO hobnobbing seem to trump first hand experience.

Jyngle and Pinger realize different subsets of the same space of ideas. Where Pinger promotes peer to peer communication, Jyngle promotes 1 to N, leader to group broadcasting; recipients can't reply. IMHO, the latter product strategy is more focused and a stronger attempt at finding a chasm crossing niche. Jyngle targets the leaders or appointed communicators of well-defined groups like athletic teams. Teams and clubs that meet regularly often have to broadcast room or field changes or snow cancellations or reminders, etc. Teams happy with the service would tell other teams, leagues other leagues, and team members their co-workers back at the office all the way to main street in a happy scenario.

With this focus, Jyngle's web interface naturally emphasizes group management. Subscribers can create groups, join groups, leave groups with mechanisms similar to those on the Yahoo Groups. Group owners have a variety of ways to get their messages out: SMS, Text to Voice Message, or Voice Message. The messages also must be scheduled with time and date.

Read the rest of this entry »