9 ms·

Inkling launches anti-bloat collaboration tool. "Email's just fine" - tgethr.com

56 points by nate 17y ago

ryanvm 17y ago
I like it. I think simplistic interfaces are the way to go for collaborative/social apps. The downside of course is that it's dead easy to clone these simple apps (like Twitter, TinyURL, etc.), which means the barrier to entry for your competition is quite low. This effect has been recently amplified with the boom in quality frameworks and dirt cheap infrastructure (EC2, App Engine). The end result is that making a killer web app is not enough and you instead have to make sure you nail the social marketing of it and build up a large enough userbase that the brand/userbase becomes the real value.
- teej 17y ago
  "The downside of course is that it's dead easy to clone these simple apps" Yes, it's easy to clone the features of these apps. So don't compete on features, compete on user experience.
  - apgwoz 17y ago
    I think this is probably more of a "get some press with a simple but effective idea" more than it's something they'll IPO off of.
- maryrosecook 17y ago
  Twitter is a bad example: in that case it's the community that makes it valuable, which is much harder to "clone".
gojomo 17y ago
Very similar to ccBetty: http://www.ccbetty.com/ http://www.ccbetty.com/
- nate 17y ago
  I do not intend to disparage ccBetty in anyway, haven't used their service enough. I'm sure there's some users that will find their service great. But mainly we wanted something to do secure business collaboration (all traffic over SSL, and the ability to S/Mime encrypt all the email traffic for example). We also wanted reusable group email addresses "somewhere@tgethr.com", instead of looking up a crap load of email addresses or everyone being forced to create their own groups of email addresses in address books all over the place. We also wanted a dead simple way to manage multiple of these groups and not feel forced to use a webapp to use the tool well. Didn't find the solution to all these wants out there, and we feel we have a knack - our opinion of course :) - of doing simple web apps for business, so we gave it a go of making something that works for us.
  - prakash 17y ago
    IMHO, you have too many buying options. I would probably have 3. 1. free 2. Combine the "basic", "plus" & "family" -- price it at $24 3. Combine "business basic" & "business pro" -- charge it at $99 Congrats on your launch!
100k 17y ago
Cool idea. It's like you took the problem Basecamp is trying to solve and went the exact opposite way. 37signals says "We hate email! Collaborate on the web!" Tgethr says "We love email! Just archive it better!"
trickjarrett 17y ago
I like the concept, actually I love the concept. One of my concerns though is that the email is not easy to give out. "No no it's together, but drop the o and the last e." We'll see though, I'll give it a try.
- nate 17y ago
  To short circuit any confusion, right now these tgethr groups are private and more private :) (using email encryption). You can't give out a tgethr address to people outside of your group and have them be able to email that address. Though we are attracted to this feature, it obviously opens up the group to spam which seems to still plague Google Groups. Still pondering this one. Currently for this purpose of a public@somewhere.com (like our support@ type emails at Inkling), we use Tender (tenderapp.com) which does a great job already of managing a public discussion, support queues, etc.
  - trickjarrett 17y ago
    Ah that does clarify it a bit, now I understand, thanks!
DougWebb 17y ago
Wouldn't an NNTP server with an SMTP gateway and HTTP client serve basically the same purpose?
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Think of it as a way to pay a nominal sum of money in order to not care what any of that means.
  - gchpaco 17y ago
    Or to deal with administering any of it...
pierattt 17y ago
I was just telling someone last night that in my experience, 90% of the people using Basecamp are just using it for the threaded messaging, and if we could improve on that and offer it as a separate product, we'd do pretty well. This is fantastic and I'll almost certainly be using it.
- dabeeeenster 17y ago
  That pretty much describes Google Wave... Oh, and I agree about Basecamp. I've only ever seen it used for message archive and the odd file sharing task.
omouse 17y ago
So it's similar to a mailing list?

56 points by nate 17y ago

I like it. I think simplistic interfaces are the way to go for collaborative/social apps. The downside of course is that it's dead easy to clone these simple apps (like Twitter, TinyURL, etc.), which means the barrier to entry for your competition is quite low. This effect has been recently amplified with the boom in quality frameworks and dirt cheap infrastructure (EC2, App Engine). The end result is that making a killer web app is not enough and you instead have to make sure you nail the social marketing of it and build up a large enough userbase that the brand/userbase becomes the real value.

teej 17y ago
"The downside of course is that it's dead easy to clone these simple apps" Yes, it's easy to clone the features of these apps. So don't compete on features, compete on user experience.
- apgwoz 17y ago
  I think this is probably more of a "get some press with a simple but effective idea" more than it's something they'll IPO off of.
maryrosecook 17y ago
Twitter is a bad example: in that case it's the community that makes it valuable, which is much harder to "clone".

gojomo 17y ago

Very similar to ccBetty: http://www.ccbetty.com/ http://www.ccbetty.com/

nate 17y ago
I do not intend to disparage ccBetty in anyway, haven't used their service enough. I'm sure there's some users that will find their service great. But mainly we wanted something to do secure business collaboration (all traffic over SSL, and the ability to S/Mime encrypt all the email traffic for example). We also wanted reusable group email addresses "somewhere@tgethr.com", instead of looking up a crap load of email addresses or everyone being forced to create their own groups of email addresses in address books all over the place. We also wanted a dead simple way to manage multiple of these groups and not feel forced to use a webapp to use the tool well. Didn't find the solution to all these wants out there, and we feel we have a knack - our opinion of course :) - of doing simple web apps for business, so we gave it a go of making something that works for us.
- prakash 17y ago
  IMHO, you have too many buying options. I would probably have 3. 1. free 2. Combine the "basic", "plus" & "family" -- price it at $24 3. Combine "business basic" & "business pro" -- charge it at $99 Congrats on your launch!

100k 17y ago

Cool idea. It's like you took the problem Basecamp is trying to solve and went the exact opposite way. 37signals says "We hate email! Collaborate on the web!" Tgethr says "We love email! Just archive it better!"

trickjarrett 17y ago

I like the concept, actually I love the concept. One of my concerns though is that the email is not easy to give out. "No no it's together, but drop the o and the last e." We'll see though, I'll give it a try.

nate 17y ago
To short circuit any confusion, right now these tgethr groups are private and more private :) (using email encryption). You can't give out a tgethr address to people outside of your group and have them be able to email that address. Though we are attracted to this feature, it obviously opens up the group to spam which seems to still plague Google Groups. Still pondering this one. Currently for this purpose of a public@somewhere.com (like our support@ type emails at Inkling), we use Tender (tenderapp.com) which does a great job already of managing a public discussion, support queues, etc.
- trickjarrett 17y ago
  Ah that does clarify it a bit, now I understand, thanks!

DougWebb 17y ago

Wouldn't an NNTP server with an SMTP gateway and HTTP client serve basically the same purpose?

byrneseyeview 17y ago
Think of it as a way to pay a nominal sum of money in order to not care what any of that means.
- gchpaco 17y ago
  Or to deal with administering any of it...

pierattt 17y ago

I was just telling someone last night that in my experience, 90% of the people using Basecamp are just using it for the threaded messaging, and if we could improve on that and offer it as a separate product, we'd do pretty well. This is fantastic and I'll almost certainly be using it.

dabeeeenster 17y ago
That pretty much describes Google Wave... Oh, and I agree about Basecamp. I've only ever seen it used for message archive and the odd file sharing task.

omouse 17y ago

So it's similar to a mailing list?