4 ms·

It's not really about Grove vs HipChat but more IRC vs HipChat. IRC is a really old and open protocol, meaning that hackers built lots of tool around it and alr

by phzbOx 15y ago

It's not really about Grove vs HipChat but more IRC vs HipChat. IRC is a really old and open protocol, meaning that hackers built lots of tool around it and already love it. But it's a pain to configure and maintain it if you've got more important things to do. (Like building your app). A couple years ago, I believe grove wouldn't have stand a chance against the hacker mentality of "I'll do it myself", but now that more and more companies need to go as fast as possible, it makes sense to pay a little bit to have a service that's stable and just work out of the box. And, for me personally, I hate HipChat clients (IIRC they run on a crap adobe version?) and I like using the existing tools I have for IRC. For instance, I've already setup everything to work on my vps with irssi, with the plugins I want, the theme I want, etc. I don't want a "new and prettier" solution to a solved problem.

herval 15y ago
I'd say it's about "the chat tool you use" vs grove. In my case, it's also HipChat/Campfire. Unless you're focusing SPECIFICALLY on "hackers that love IRC" - in which case your market is quite small (compared to the whole corporate chat market), imho...
- phzbOx 15y ago
  Well, "hackers that love IRC" is still a huge market if you think about all the software companies. And, even if it's a smaller one, sometime it's better to create a product that'll be used by less people rather than trying to build something for everyone and ended up with nobody using it. But I feel your concern, Grove might become a successful small business but they'll have to attack other market or build different products to continue to grow.
lazerwalker 15y ago
I'm not a fan of HipChat's official native clients (well, as 'native' as you consider Adobe Air), but the web client is very nice and (more importantly) it's trivial to get your HipChat account set up in Adium/Pidgin/<insert your favorite IM client with Jabber support>.

by phzbOx 15y ago

herval 15y ago

I'd say it's about "the chat tool you use" vs grove. In my case, it's also HipChat/Campfire. Unless you're focusing SPECIFICALLY on "hackers that love IRC" - in which case your market is quite small (compared to the whole corporate chat market), imho...

phzbOx 15y ago
Well, "hackers that love IRC" is still a huge market if you think about all the software companies. And, even if it's a smaller one, sometime it's better to create a product that'll be used by less people rather than trying to build something for everyone and ended up with nobody using it. But I feel your concern, Grove might become a successful small business but they'll have to attack other market or build different products to continue to grow.

lazerwalker 15y ago

I'm not a fan of HipChat's official native clients (well, as 'native' as you consider Adobe Air), but the web client is very nice and (more importantly) it's trivial to get your HipChat account set up in Adium/Pidgin/<insert your favorite IM client with Jabber support>.