Silicon Valley based 3Bubbles, which launches next week, is going to be an awesome way for bloggers and other websites to extend the conversation on the things that they write about.
They have created a very easy to integrate Ajax based chat interface that can be added to every blog post automatically. By simply adding a code snippet into the blog template, a link will be included in every post (think comments, trackbacks, and now chat) to open a chat window where readers can debate and discuss the post.
The service will eventually integrate advertising into the ajax chat window, and the company says that they will split revenue with bloggers. Alternatively, bloggers can pay a monthly fee for the service and either turn off ads, or keep all of the advertising revenue.
3bubbles was founded by Drew Golkar and Jeremie Miller, and is lucky enough to have Stowe Boyd as an advisor (Stowe is also writing about 3bubbles today).
The hope is that Jeremie Miller’s involvement (he is the inventor of
the Jabber protocol) will ensure that 3bubbles will be scalable enough to handle all of this distributed traffic. A somewhat comparable service, ajchat, has had serious trouble keeping the service stable.
3bubbles is going to be wildly popular with bloggers. The two times I’ve added chat to TechCrunch (the ajchat post and the bunchball post), a rich discussion popped up immediately. This is also a brilliant idea for news sites like Memeorandum and NewsVine.
Sign up for the 3bubbles beta here.
Looks very interesting. I always have loved real-time conversations. Allowing bloggers to add that functionality to any post is just amazing. Can’t wait to see it in action. Oh, and Newsvine does actually have real-time chat using Flash at the bottom of every post.
This will change the way we think of blogs. Instead of reading static comments and going back and forth like emails, finally! blogs will be live and dynamic. The amount of content associated with blogs will grow exponentially after adding this service.
My immediate thought is, would the chat be saved in any way?
Occasionally comments are useful to the poster and interesting to other readers. While the signal to noise ratio in comments is even lower than that in blog posts (Note: Techcrunch is an extremely atypical blog in this respect) there may still be bits of good signal in there worth saving.
My suggestion would be to either have full logs available, or to let people save “conclusions” they may reach in chat to a more permanent form in the comments.
-Ian
sounds great, but the colors are hideos, there better be an option for changing the color
is this similar to the newsvine discuss function?
I hope this won’t be something that spammers will be able to target. Otherwise, I really like this idea and functionality.
Sorry, but I’m a bit skeptical. Not too long ago, in the early Web 1.0 days, there was a lot of hype about putting chat on websites.
I wonder how many sites (aside from your top 100 blogs) can sustain a chatroom for a single post, let alone an entire site?
If most visitors click a link to find an empty chatroom, they will quickly learn to ignore the ‘chat’ link.
I produced a successful chat-based forum for AOL in ‘96, and I think some of the lessons we learned from that might be helpful here — site that use 3Bubbles should organise a chat schedule.
For example — “Discuss this post at 6pm-8pm EST” — so people will know when to expect a decent amount of traffic.
Also, if the blog writer(s) appear as moderators to the discussion, that would be a big draw as well.
BZZT. Fail.
Every Yahoo Group also has a chat window. You need more than a hundred people in the group at the same time to get two of them into the chat window.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A couple of thoughts on the last two comments. I failed to point out that the Chat link will show the number of people in the room, e.g., chat(3). So people will know if no one else is in there. As a publisher I’d be in the chat room on a new post for a while afterwards, ready to discuss the company. I suspect the company may have a rep or two in it as well.
I don’t know if this will work for smaller blogs, but it is an amazing tool for me and I think it will be extremely popular based on prior experiments.
Re: #8 - The lessons learned in a 1996 AOL chat room bear very little relevance to the 2006 Web. People think about interacting with other people ON the internet in a very different way today than we did back then. There is a critical mass of discussion happening all around us, and I think a service like this is going to tap into a huge latent demand. I think we’ve all just been waiting for this to be done right. Heck I’m ready to debate this live with someone right now…
If I have one reservation about the push toward such instantaneous interaction, is that it may not lend itself well to people sitting back and formulating well-constructed thought and argument. But this is a comment on “chatting” in general, and not specific to what 3bubbles is doing. I just think the never-ending push to more, shorter-term conversations is somewhat alarming.
Your right about AOL circa 1996 being different than the web of today.
Back then you were guaranteed a captive audience of hundreds who were less likely to be tempted to browse elsewhere.
Other than that, the technology of interaction in a chatroom hasn’t changed much at all.
Anyhow, I wasn’t commenting on the differences between AOL and the Web, I was offering up some techniques that have been useful in building and maintaining successful chatrooms on a variety of platforms.
Let’s not get so heady with Web 2.0 buzz that we think we’re reinventing everything from scratch — don’t forget the mistakes of Web 1.0, when people would say something like “your business plans of 1986 hardly apply to the internet boom of 1996″
I’m not that chatty, but this is really interesting. It might actually work in on some sites. I think the mere possibility to chat about an aricle is interesting enough…
You know, I know it’s out of style to be all hung up on things like “aesthetics” and to gripe about something not being “pleasing to the eye”, but really. I wouldn’t let this thing anywhere near my website (not that my site is exactly winning any beauty pageants) mostly because it is so hideous.
It’s like the ugly stick wandered it’s way back on to the internet, after an exodus and a brief return lurking around and throwing silkscreen out there as an all-purpose use-everywhere font a few years back, and smacked at least 80% of everything branded “Web 2.0″ with a heavy dose of uglification.
Also it seems to be that a lot of people are forgetting the fact that things like this have already been done. Shoutboxes, anyone? Admittedly not per-post, but is it necessary? We have comment systems in place. No site is going to recieve enough traffic to make per-post real-time chat something that will be worth a visit outside of the first 10 seconds something is posted.
There used to be plenty of other “live chat on your website” services and, well, they’re most regulated to business now, and I don’t even see them being used by business anymore.
It’s a gimmick, made fresh and new with some new buzzwords. It’s like Chatsum, which I’m in the beta of and like an awful lot. I’m not in denial about the fact that a service just like it existed several years ago and ultimately failed. Plenty have. Why is it a good idea to do it now? I have no idea. I really want to know who exactly started this whole Web 2.0 craze. Every person who has started up some new AJAX service and will eventually lose all their money because of it, well, I’m just going to assume that they’ll want to know as well.
There are, as of now, 16 postings on this over about a 13 hour time frame. I don’t think Techrunch has the critical mass at any given time to make 24/7 real time chat work.
What might work are Chat Events, Mike hosts, the founders are in the room, the event is promoted in advance on the site and scheduled for a specific time. The transcript is then archived.
This is identical to the Live Events group at Y! did in the late 1990s. My co-founder at Fat Calico ran that group. We did about 350 events a month with celebs, political, financial and tech luminaries.
I’m very excited to see it. I think it will be a great service, scalability issues aside (they will be large issues). Michael, who funded three bubbles?
3Bubbles is a pretty cool idea. But I’m concerned that people will bypass adding comments to a post and use the chat instead. If that becomes the case I wouldn’t be able to come here and read all of your posts. Sure they could take care of that by somehow capturing and posting a history of the conversation, but I don’t think would work out too well. People are fairly thoughtful and at least somewhat articulate when they write a comment, however chatting tends to get much more diluted, I don’t think a lot of people would have the patience to read through 5000 lines of chat when they’re used to reading though 20 clearly put comments.
I’ve been thinking about this more…
How is this a company?
It’s not even a complete product, it’s a feature of a product.
Is there any other play here other than to sell out (probabaly at a discount) as the cash to scale and support this runs out? Is there any potential revenue stream here? “Companies” with no cash flow have very few options.
Have you all checked out this site yet? http://www.parm.net/web2.0/
Agreed #21. All too often these days people are launching Features and going to market as Companies. It’s a bit disturbing that they get the press and coverage that they do without any adoption, critical mass, business model, or revenues.
Eveything these days is about the next “IF” and “BUT”…sound familiar?
I’m all in favor of exciting new evolutions of web based technologies but lets not kid ourselves into thinking that everything released is going to be the next big thing…let alone be around in a year.
doesn’t newsvine already offer this exact service?
i can see it being very handy on sites like gizmodo or ask.metafilter.com or… http://www.warandpiece.com
Adding chat to blogs will be most useful on large sites with lots of traffic, smaller sites won’t see much use. Value increases ascending the popdex. Why not just do it in Skype?
Sounds kinda-sorta like Campfire, except uglier, and with a slightly less useful purpose.
This reminds me of BlogChat:
http://www.blogchat.com/
It’s been a few years, but I was experimenting with it back in 2002:
http://decafbad.com/blog/2002/04/16/ooooif
As were others…
http://simon.incutio.com/archi.....gchatRocks
If I recall, it was built by Brent Ashley long before AJAX ever became a craze. Maybe it was just a bit before its time.
What is this, 1999?
… I wonder if the chat will be archived into the blog? I mean, *that* would be useful… potentially. If there was some kind of really intelligent archive filter which just saved useful facts. I guess you could get everyone to “autotag” their own content as they type it (you know, relevant, off-topic, whatever)… but it gets kinda… well… difficult, hey?
If you’d like free source code that has a 50% built (but working) chat thing like this done already, check this out or try this embedded demo. Admittedly, it’s mine and I threw it together in a few hours a month ago, but it looks and works better than that one bizarrely.
Of course, you can’t belittle the efforts of these guys because 99% of the work is in infrastructure in my experience with that sort of thing. Getting chat rooms on thousands of sites is a major infrastructural challenge, whereas throwing together code and a chat room that looks good is easy-peasy. So I still wish these guys the best of luck!
This is supposed to be cool? :S
As Brad said, shoutboxes are between us since.. 1998?
Answering this:
Well…. how many bloggers has more than 25.000 readers on feedburner?
just signed up for 3Bubbles even if its closed for public right now. reported the bug to 3Bubbles so that they can fix that till beta-round opens…
Click on the link to get to my post where i wrote about it…
Well, at least one other person picked up on/agreed with my logic, but let’s reword this fot those who aren’t following yet.
Participation, like sales, like everything else, is a numbers game.
Let’s be generous and say the chat thing on a site (let alone a *post*, which seems to be what they’re talking about, daft eejits that they are) gets 3% of current visitors.
Do the sums which neither this company — nor evidently Mike — has bothered to. To get >1 chatter at any given moment your site needs to be doing at least 1.5 million pages per month.
Once again, I tell you: Stupid. Stupid. STUPID.
#40 - the good news is it doesn’t cost us anything to just wait a few days and try it out. But my previous chat attempts (linked in my blog) were wildly successful.
Your previous chat attempts were on a per-site, not a per-post basis.
And your blog’s traffic compares with no more than a couple hundred others at the higher end of the scale.
Numbers, numbers, numbers.
“It works for me” ignores that *this* would need to work for you at 10% of your audience rate, quite apart from smacking of the section marked “I Am The World” in a well-known Dilbert ‘You are wrong because you used one or more of these logical errors’ form.
Anonymous comments are so awesome.
Albert Einstein - Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Imagine the ability to instantly connect with and chat with people who care about the same subject anytime, anywhere.
Imagine the ability to express yourself to others in real-time about any web content.
3Bubbles is all about creating real-time human dialogue.
Imagine the possibilities with 3Bubbles….
This is an interesting discussion. From watching the chat traffic on your Bunchball post and on some other websites that have put in Bunchball games with chat, I’ve noticed that once a post goes “below the fold”, or off the front page, the amount of conversation drops off dramatically. If the intent is to foster discussion/community at a site, it seems like a site-wide solution would be better than a per-post solution. The topic(s) being discussed will probably naturally be the most recent post(s) anyway.
I’m sure 3Bubbles will probably support this. You can also do this by integrating something like Userplane, which offers free, ad-supported chat for sites. I don’t think Userplane tells you how many people are in the chat though, so you’ll have to actually go in to check it out.
I’d encourage people interested in the feasibility of having enough people on a site to have a vibrant discussion to take a look at the Userplane Directory. Nose around and hop into some, and see how many people are in any community at any point in time and what kind of discussions are taking place.
Both 3Bubbles and Userplane pop open a new window. If you’d prefer to keep the chat exposed directly in the page, you could also use something like the Just Chat game from Bunchball embedded in your sidebar.
- rajat
I want to emphasize two things:
1- I do not how far 3bubbles are in their development but looks like they are in pre-beta or beta at best. So things like look and feel will definitely get better with time and user feedback.
2- YES! Traffic is a valid concern. However, if the content is worthy, people will allot time to chat about it. There are a lot of details that need to be hashed out on how to maximize the use of this service. Mike already suggested a tempting scenario:
[…] As a publisher I’d be in the chat room on a new post for a while afterwards, ready to discuss the company. I suspect the company may have a rep or two in it as well. […]
[quote]However, if the content is worthy, people will allot time to chat about it.[/quote]
False assumption.
3Bubbles is a nice gadget, but unfortunately it will only add to the noise of online conversations.
With so many comments and trackbacks adding to a discussion without providing closure, it is hard to follow and summarize conclusions from most online conversations. (e.g. this will be comment #59 to this post)
Still looking for that killer “this is a summary of views on this post” application…
What 3Bubbles needs IMHO is an method by which you can monitor a chat room in the background. Say, for example you could have an IM app notify you when someone enters the chat room and/or posts a message.
If you come across a post that really interests you, or your company is the subject of the post you’d want the ability to monitor the conversation over a long period of time (think of the global time differences)
I just can’t imagine sitting at my desk with a window open to the chat and having to check it every couple minutes to see if anything interesting is going on.
Taking it a step further, it would be cool if you could monitor and/or participate in a chat room from a mobile device.
It took **Twenty One** comments for someone to point out that this has no chance? I will fall off my chair if this “company” (and it is insulting to even use the phrase with a venture like this) generates $50,000 in revenue during it’s lifetime. Fortunately, they plan to share half of it with their blog partners, so that would total a whole $25,000 in gross profit if they even got that far.
Hope these guys didn’t quit their day jobs.
Blogging sites like Multiply natively include real-time discussions driven by AJAX technoligies.
I’m not quite sure what the future is for the dozens of these micro-component producing companies. They are basically just building prototypes and specs for features that will ultimately be built-in to bigger products.
Allow me to re-write the above chat conversation the way it would REALLY happen…
Anon77: dude this blog post is totally gay!! LOLZzZROFL
PelicanBoner82: no way asshat, ur like totally an asshat, it r00lz!
Dear friends of chat-on-web-page-systems. It’s a great idea. Let people meet and talk on the Web. It opens a new world of real web life. But please use a Virtual Presence system, which lets you meet and talk everywhere. If you really like to meet people on the Web then don’t use yet another web-chat. Use the real thing. Use something like Web Mobs (http://www.webmobs.de/.
When you compare with Stickam, what so special about text chat? Its 2006 now.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/02/14/pimp-my-blog/
I think in many cases 3bubbles would work. Having a lot of traffic would be the first requirement. I’m not sure many sites would have enough traffic to justify the chatbox. I’ve tried similar things in the past. Excellent idea and implementation though.
3 Bubbles is great
Hey, what happened to 3bubbles did their page get hacked?
I went looking for them and the page is some list of most popular pop songs… does anyone know what’s going on?
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