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February 16, 2006

37 Signals Launches Campfire

Michael Arrington

29 comments »

Campfire, the new 37 Signals product, launched yesterday. It is a dead simple way to create a robust, permanent (with URL) group chat.

Key features include embedded images, permanent URL for chat, no client to download (chat is in the web page), and easy file sharing. I’m basically thinking of it as a real time wiki or an easy to use IRC product with enhanced features.

They claim it takes 10 seconds to create a new chat, and they are correct. It is dead simple to use and has an incredibly intuitive interface. It’s a great addition to the 37 Signals product suite.

Pricing ranges from free to $50/month based on number of chat users and storage desired. To learn more about how Campfire works, take the tour.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Jason Fried

    February 16th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

    Thanks for the post Michael. If you know IRC then think of it as simple IRC for everyone. If you don’t know what IRC is then Campfire is especially built for you.

  2. fjarlq

    February 16th, 2006 at 7:31 pm

    Very cool, thanks for the link. My friends and I have been doing essentially the same thing for the past few years, by using local IRC-like server with multiple permanent channels, and everybody connects to it using an irc client run within the screen utility, so connections are permanent and the chat history is available in scrollback. It’s become very useful to grep the channel logs for past information.

    Glad to see this coming to the Web. I think extended families and groups of friends would enjoy using it as well as business.

  3. Jie Kang

    February 16th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

    It’s something that makes me go why didn’t I think of that?!

  4. Jeremy

    February 16th, 2006 at 7:53 pm

    Skype already allows for persistant chat, with archived histories! I’m sorry, it’s an interesting product if not all that exciting, it’s just hard to believe there’s a big market for paying for chat these days.

  5. Ewan

    February 16th, 2006 at 8:13 pm

    It’s very smart. I love it!

  6. jonto

    February 16th, 2006 at 8:42 pm

    There is talk that it will be integrated into the Basecamp offering which would be huge!

  7. Jason Fried

    February 16th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

    We will be working on Basecamp integration, yes. They’ll remain separate products but they’ll be very very good friends ;)

  8. Mark Devlin

    February 16th, 2006 at 11:36 pm

    I actually pay to run a hosted chat server on my site (Pulpchat). This looks better, although it has fewer customisation options, but is too expensive. It is also not much use unless it can read existing user databases.

    As for communicating with clients, I don’t see why you wouldn’t just use any IM client for free.

    I am also a Basecamp customer, but I don’t think I would want to pay extra for this feature.

  9. Mat

    February 16th, 2006 at 11:55 pm

    I feel the same way as most here. Neat product - I’d probably use it with my family if it were free, but I’m not willing to pay for it.

    Mat

  10. Peter

    February 17th, 2006 at 3:01 am

    I don’t think that chats are something, people like to pay for. I won’t - not even 12$. I realy like Basecamp, but I think the pricing is wrong… Unfortunatly.

  11. Hans Martin Kern

    February 17th, 2006 at 3:29 am

    I don’t get it. There are not enough features in there to justify the cost.

  12. Jason

    February 17th, 2006 at 5:20 am

    Alamak has been doing this for years.

  13. Mark

    February 17th, 2006 at 6:47 am

    Keep in mind that the pricing range does not extend down to Free on this one. There’s a 30-day free trial, then a fee kicks in.

  14. Jay

    February 17th, 2006 at 8:59 am

    Good execution, but Macromedia Breeze and LiveMeeting are better with real-time screensharing.

  15. Dan Diemer

    February 17th, 2006 at 10:11 am

    they really should offer a free version like basecamp.

  16. Jason Fried

    February 17th, 2006 at 11:09 am

    Jay, text is the killer app. We’re not trying to solve the screensharing problem — we’ll let the others solve that one. We’re solving the basic problem — making it dead simple for a group of people to have a persistent chat room online where they can discuss, make decisions, share files, and page through past conversations.

  17. Dave Brook

    February 17th, 2006 at 1:20 pm

    Persistent group chat has been around for 8 years. For more recent stuff pls see:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....ime_editor

  18. usrbingeek

    February 17th, 2006 at 5:45 pm

    Campfire’s pricing is purely ridiculous.

    I run the WyldRyde IRC network and we offer a completely free java-based web chat script that can be added to any web site and loaded in any Java-compatible web browser. We have no limit on the number of users. All we ask is the chat not be used for illegal purposes.

  19. Jeff

    February 18th, 2006 at 6:19 am

    It’s an interesting products for Small Business Groups. Personnally for permanent chat i use Skype. It’s a pretty cool feature but, sure, you need skype on the computer to run it.

  20. Zvi Cohen

    October 20th, 2006 at 3:19 am

    Another overhyped underdeveloped stinker from 37 signals.

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