Company: Overview:
Imagine Word, but as an ajax browser application that was free. And allowed tagging of documents. And you could set reader permissions for each document you create and allow others to edit the document, or just read it. That’s what Writely is.
Brian Benzinger at Solution Watch pointed it out to me this evening during a long Google Talk chat. It is a very functional word processor with most of the bells and whistles you’d expect – a range of fonts and styles, embedded images (up to 2 megs each), spell checker, etc. It has a fantastic wysiwyg editor. It also has an option to upload and/or save in Word format.
So the Writely guys and gals built the core feature set with an ajax UI, and then they went a step further and added some cool web 2.0 stuff. In addition to naming a document, you can allow others to edit it, or allow them read-only status. Documents can also be tagged for easy searches later – a nice touch. Writely is also completely free during its beta stage.
In many ways, this is a wiki with a nice wysiwyg front end (I keep thinking of wikiwyg), plus the ability to set permissions.
However, it is also more than that
Writely is a highly specialized niche application built with ajax. Ajax allows this (and other applications) to act very much like desktop apps. Stuff like this must get Microsoft’s attention…How long will it be before a full suite of platform-independent ajax-enabled office applications becomes available? If all you need is a browser to open and edit these documents, the huge network effect enjoyed by Microsoft Office could simply vanish.
For more information on Writely, see their blog here and Shadows in Motion.
Very cool. They should give users a taste of this service without having to fork over email/password. I give them credit for making it dead simple to register, but it’s still so annoying. They should let people create a document, invite others to check it out and change it (again, without forcing any of them to sign in) but the doc would be public. Then, they could constantly remind users that the doc is public and an account is required to make it private. I am sure they are on to something huge with this, but I think they’ll find a lot of people won’t bother signing up to try it. It will also get hyper competitive quickly so eliminating all user adoption barriers is key.
Dorrian,
I like your idea, but as an entrepreneur I can imagine the emails, phone calls and even lawsuits I’d be getting from customers who didn’t read the terms and conditions properly and who went berserk after discovering their document were public.
A better way might be to limit the number of documents you can create prior to registration (tracked via cookie) and/or embed ads into the documents for unregistered/unpaying users.
Greg, you nailed it.
Put it in bold letters on top of every page you use and every document you create. I’d rather have 1,000 phone calls (even a few stupid law suits) from 1,000,000 customers than 1,000 customers. Come on, you know that wasn’t the entrepreneur in you speaking…
Ok, it was the lawyer in me speaking.
Hi gang –
I’m one of the writely engineers. Totally glad you guys like it so much – we’re happy with it so far, but have much farther we want to go.
I wanted to comment on the issue about requiring emails. Dorrian is right – we really, really care about removing barriers to working with Writely, so we tried to make it very easy – you can start working on a doc regardless of whether the email you give is valid or not, for example.
So why ask for one? Just so the user can find their document later – we didn’t want people starting on one machine, doing something they cared about before really registering, and then killing their cookies or going somewhere else and being out of luck.
But it’s a point well taken, and I like some of the suggestions above – we’ll think about whether we can make this even easier in the future.
Thanks again!
Sam
This is an excellent idea finally being realised. I had a much simpler tool developed on the Zope/CMF platform by a Danish company. I wish the Writely people would make a Zope/Plone add-on with this facility. It is extremely useful for collaborative work. What we need is an attractive way of doing it, and this looks to be a serious way of doing it.
They have sold Writely. I sell my index.
somebody wants to buy it again?
Thanks.
Since writely has been taken up by google now,it seems war is ON !!!
if you would like an email invitation to writely documents, you can leave your email address at my jbeauty webpage in the comment section
if you would like an email invitation to writely documents, you can leave your email address at my http://www.jbeauty.com blog
Hi, I have setup a website for invitations. Writely and Google Spreadsheet. It has been “Dugg” on Digg.com and it is not a scam or that kind. For those who want an invitation, please visit: http://pnut.kic...ass.org/gsheet/Best regards,
Piet Nutbey
The Netherlands
http://writelys...re.blogspot.com,
Writely documents shared!
I also have the idea,anything needs sometime.
good information…
so, how much was it sold for?