Slovakian startup Geesee launched its cross site chat service this week and I think it has a lot of potential. It’s an embedded chat service that lets users communicate across any number of web sites in common chat rooms organized by tags. In other words, you can use Geesee to chat about Web 2.0 or any other topic while you are on TechCrunch with people who are on other sites. You can chat in multiple rooms organized by tabs.
It’s a potentially powerful connector for thematic conversations all around the web. A Geesee chat box on your site lets your readers chat in real time with visitors to related sites elsewhere. It’s just launched and has it’s kinks, but I really like it. Geesee offers a very different experience from services like Meebo Me and 3Bubbles. In fact, you can’t really even compare them. The eight person company was co-founded by Milan Zigmond and Roman Pohancenik. They say they have raised $50,000 in funding.
We profiled Geesee prelaunch in September and I wrote that if the company could pull off what it aims to do, it could change the web chat world. Now that the site has gone live, most everything but scalability looks solid. I’ve embedded a Geesee chat window below this post so we can get some idea of the service’s scalability. (Jump on in, there’s an active conversation going on in the TechCrunch room right after I posted this. To see how you can enter one conversation from multiple sites, try coming in through Marshallk.com Update: The conversation may have devolved as the hour grew later, our apologies if that’s the case when you try it out.)
Multiple rooms can be chatted in at once, side by side as tabs inside the interface. Audio notification of new messages in any chat can be turned on or off individually by tab. That’s very important if I’m going to keep using slow Geesee chats while doing something else. Audio notification is a little thing that makes a big impact on usefulness and the ability to turn off audio for individual chats is smart.
As you can see from the embedded example below, AdSense at the bottom of the chat window changes every 30 seconds. Geesee says the ads are contextual to the chat room’s tags and the last 4 lines of chat. They are having some problems with the ads changing when the box is at some sizes, but I expect this will be resolved shortly. It’s not working for me at all and it’s obviously quite important.
The most obvious shortcoming of Geesee so far is that it can’t be resized to fit into sidebars. The company tells me they will come out with a sidebar version soon but have to change it to fit user lists and tabs into the small size. I really ought to be able to set the chat box to start on a particular room with the option to go elsewhere. There are a number of design decisions that I wish were different, but team Geesee tells me they are waiting for user feedback to decide much of the direction they will go in.
I’d also like to see OpenID login, something that is offered by another web chat service I hope to profile soon. I’d also like to be able to work elsewhere for more than 30 minutes without being disconnected, perhaps if there was a checkbox to opt into an extended login.
All in all though, I think this is one prelaunch startup that has come close to delivering as promised. Give it a try, I think you’ll enjoy using it. Now if they can just find a way to make it available in sidebar size it could really take off. I think it’s a great idea.
Comments
Marshall, I typically find your comments very insightful but here you are confusing “live chat” and “instant messaging”. 3bubbles, for instance, is an example of browser-based live chat. Meebome is an instant messaging application for websites - it connects web visitors and website or blog owners via instant messaging networks (AOL, Yahoo, MSN etc.).
For an example of another IM for websites application take a look at our site http://www.webimchat.com.
To cut the long story short Geese is not an alternative to Meebome, since it is not quite the same animal.
Alex, thanks for the comment. I’ve added a sentence to emphasize that this is in fact quite unlike those other services.
“…Geesee offers a very different experience from services like Meebo Me and 3Bubbles. In fact, you can’t really even compare them” - didn’t he just say this above (hence my quote)…as for webimchat, your link goes to a parked page…
at any rate, i’ve had my son (a fan of aim) try out a bunch of these services and he really likes meebo and has begun to use it completely instead of the actual client software…
i’m growing a little concerned that all of these companies are really just taking the “shout box” to the next level, and in that case, these are just feature sets, not actual companies (imho)…
The service seems very potent to me. Once it is out of beta-stage I bet it will grow in popularity.
I did not test out all the functions yet but there are some negative aspects too ofcourse. I bet these will be taken care of some time.
1.) spam problem - there is no way to block other users
2.) flash - I’m just not a fan of it
3.) a bit of a lag / messages don’t scroll up nicely
Apparently there is support for spam (and bad behavior as well).
Definitely a good start here.
Marshall, no problem. IM is different. There are only a handful of IM networks and an unlimited number of web chats (flash, java, ajax, etc.). The correct link to our website is http://www.webimchat.com without the trailing dot. The company name is different but I can’t post it here.
http://incircles.com
Marshall–
I like the idea alot, though, unfortunately, the content of the chatting while I was in there was pretty pathetic.
VCMike, I can only attest to the quality of the technology
Fact is though that the very phenomenon you observed may be the weakness of such technology - chat is so quick and anonymous that there is no effective social or tech check on peoples’ behavior. Cross site chat may be even worse! I should have mentioned a need for the service to be able to block users by IP.
Yes, moderation abilities are definitely needed.
A chat client written in Flash?
Really, what is the usp? Why should I use this? There are tens of other offerings on the net like this, why should I go with GeeSee (or indeed, roll my own)?
This is a neat concept. The only problem with it is the is the sheer amount of noise generated by multiple people chatting simultaneously.
I’m not sure how useful it is in terms of stimulating RT chat when you’re basically communicating ‘out in the open’ for all to hear and respond. I guess you could create a private room with the person you want to talk with but then that gets a little too weird and intimate imo…
This is a very interesting concept that depicts the new paradigm in Instant Messageing. The fusion of chat and IM seems to be ‘Web IM’. What’s neat about Web Im is that it offers a distributed model that these IM bohemoths will find difficult to adapt to.
I could be wrong but isn’t this what Web 2.0 is about - using new and existing technologies to create new novel platforms that facilitate superior social interaction. You know, GeeSee and the handfull of competitors opening a massive market that will become slicker and more palateble over teh coming years. In time, Web IM technology that will be integrated with in every kind of application imaginable. We should look past the ‘cheesy’ in the ‘GeeSee’ and see it for what it really is - just one of the many pioneering interactive affinity based communication platforms that will ultimately beautify and mutate.
“Fact is though that the very phenomenon you observed may be the weakness of such technology - chat is so quick and anonymous that there is no effective social or tech check on peoples’ behavior. Cross site chat may be even worse! I should have mentioned a need for the service to be able to block users by IP.”
I think there is a solution to eliminating spam on Gee See; automatically assign moderator rights to the website owner. Since the chat spans to several pages, there will be a couple of mods, from other sites as well, who can make sure there is no spam.
And I agree, there was quite a lot of spam during the day. But I did find the service quite useful in getting reviews for our early beta startup. Though, as with other chat rooms, it will be quite difficult to monetize this. The way they are using Google ads will simply not work, for two reasons:
1. People don’t focus on any ads when focused on typing/chatting.
2. The ads are not relevant to any of the content created. In fact, it can never be relevant since the content within chat rooms is very inconsistent and dynamic.
3. Pop up blockers simply block the ads when we actually do click on them.
The service has potential, but I am afraid it will be difficult to monetize it.
-Jawad Shuaib
Jawad, you male some interesting points. I disagree with you on the monetization of these types of services. As you have seen for your self they are very addictive. Addiction or engagement is the currency of the Internet. These companies can glean some high value behavioral nuggets from the noise and it won’t be long before they realize how to monetize this burgeoning phenomenon. I think it’s fair to say that if these companies can (as Dave said) beautify and mutate into polished services they are prime candidates for significant M&As down the road. High amounts of real time behavioral data = high value – GeeSee may not have it’s act together yet but a polished play in this area is very appealing.
Hi everybody,
One by one:
Florian - we know about these problems and will sort them out ASAP
SPAM - true about this one as well. We plan to add a feature where users can kick(maybe ban) other users. We want Geesee to evolve by itself, tring to leave the moderation on users themselves. We were thinking about something like this: If 5 different users in the room will select one user to ban, he’ll get banned. If someone gets banned 3 times the IP can be kicked. Or find some other way of letting users to do it. We have support for bad words filter (is OFF), flood protection (is ON) and IP filter (is OFF) as well. Any ideas how you would deal with spam?
Nemrut - noise - sound can be turned off in any room
Dave - I think Dave get it right. Geesee can mutate and probably will to a totally different service in time. Only users will show the direction of it.
Jawad - Ads are working fine when you open geesee in full window (e.g. here http://web.geesee.com/sys/Geesee.ashx?ChatId=1) But in this small size there is a little problem we are solving. Ads are relevant to room tags and so far to last 4 messages in the room. We have to work a lot to optimize this ads system to actually start making some money. In fact we are out 3 days, nobody knows about us and I’ve already got 10 emails from people willing to advertise in Geesee. Anyway the important thing is to get users at the first place, once you have users, the money will come by itself.
I think that idea of connecting chat content with Adsense is innovative.
Interesting functionality, but seriously, help us out here, GeeSee engineers:
*Disable JS embeds immediately.*
In the GeeSee chat rooms, it’s possible to type JS code within a tag and have that code run on the user’s browser.
Ouch.
I won’t post any exploit code, but you can imagine what sort of while loops and for loops can be run to force people to have to kill their browser process.
Or, just go into the room for 15 or 20 seconds and watch it happen. People are all over this tonight.
Thank you Steve, it’s being taken care of.
Here is a exploit:
while(1){alert(”Hi”)}
Have fun!!
Ouch… Buub’s exploit just locked up my browser. Dangerous.
Raj, perhaps you didn’t know that you have to add the script tag, and then paste it to the chat….an advice:
first –> “read”;
second –> “think”;
third –> “put a comment!”;
I have to re-boot my computer because of an infinite alert loop. How many other bad things can this chat be done? It seems the javascript will destroy the world soon!
ups!
.
.
.
.
.
sorry!
Besides the ads part, it looks similar to what gabbly.com offers. Although embedding the ads is a quite intuitive thinking.
Milan — No problem about the bug report. I’m sure you’ll get it squared away quickly.
Regardless, tonight is the first night a lot of TechCrunch readers will have had a direct, realtime conversation with *other* fellow TechCrunch readers … and that definitely deserves some merit.
Androhair: Youtube has been a boom in the online video industry but has someone seen the new microsoft service…do you think google will let microsoft come between this kind of market?
http://www.androhair.com
Very nice chat .
Guys, lets not go off topic. All newly minted startups have security problems.
VCr and Milan, traffic does not necessairly translate into advertisement revenue. A company that does not make money is not a business.
Let’s not forget, chatting has been around for a long time. However, ICQ was not able to monetize it; IRC was not able to monetize it; Yahoo! and so many other companies, since then, have not been able to monetize it. I expect Web 2.0 companies to realize that advertising systems (especially Google adsense) does not make money in chatting softwares.
Milan, you are better off selling the service to the premium users (or to webhosts that host your service, ie TC). Web applications as a service worked well for JotSpot, Joel and 31Signals. That, to me, seems to be the only business model you can actually earn a few bucks from. Take care,
Jawad
About the spam problem..
Why depend on a couple users to ban one user. Just give the option to block other users. That way you also can block users that simply annoy you without having to ban them.
Ofcourse a pernament IP ban is nice too.. some people deserve that as it has been proven yesterday.
Regardless of the revenue model (and I agree with Jawad), I don’t “get” these kinds of services that are basically ad hoc groupings of people in the same chat room — it just seems like it can only make for a poor signal/noise ratio. People skim the Web, and rapidly move from page to page and topic to topic.
The “IM in a browser window” plays (like Meebo) I get — at least from a user value prop. These are people who already use IM to communicate with a circle of friends, much different than connecting to misc users across the Web.
Unless it’s a customer support scenario, seems to me that “strangers connecting by chat” plays really don’t offer much more than novelty.
all in all it still is a very nice app. in that you can easily install it on ur site without any hassles…
I remember looking endlessly for a chat app. 4 my site and I I couldn’t quite find it…
I had to settle for something else (which I like) but still…
Script thing - it’s fixed. No more endless loops
Revenue model - so far it’s showing up to be a great choice. I don’t get why would google adsense not work in chatting systems. I’d say that exact opposite is true. The click on the ad in chat is the same as on any other site. Also I’ve already got 2 emails from ad network systems looking for cooperation (it’s only 3rd day of the beta and we don’t have any users yet)
Florian - great idea with the blocking of users, it would be nice if a user can simply turn off messages from other users that he don’t like or annoy him by simple click in the user list. We should definetelly give it some thoughts.
Thanks for comments.
Jordan, but be fair - your company has committed to a model that requires a download to create affinity social networking. The download is going to limit your proliferation and kill you, if you don’t have an existing user base - and as far as trying to connect people based on tag relations well that’s just another one of the scores of similar failing attempts – which reeks of ‘also-ran’ in the social network play. Face it, this model is addictive and above all a bunch of fun – can you honestly say the same about your company?
Milan~
I actually liked the chat, and thought it was pretty good. In fact I think gamers will like it also, and Ive been looking into embeded chat for our site (as well as VOIP but I STILL cant find anything decent) for a bit, I’m going to talk to my partner and see if we can throw this in for release.
Quick question: Can the chat box be reskinned on our end to be more aligned with our sites look/feel?
Allen drop me an email to info@geesee.com. We can discuss some details there.
Our goal now is to get Geesee deployed on some ammount of sites so it’s “working” (enough chatters are in) and then test, test, test, fix, improve, test
This is very similar to Gabbly. First of all conversations are very meaningful (for a typical IM user) when done in private with the known group of friends than public. Public chat rooms have very little attention span of a user. It will be interesting to see how people adopt this concept.
Steve, rather than dilute the GeeSee discussion, I’d be happy to chat with you more about this via email or something. You might be right, you might be wrong — only time will tell. And I can certainly understand your perspective based on what YOU see now. More to come.
Flobox.com is looking for an investor/business partners - briantygraham@yahoo.com
Default room feature is awailable.
Hi -
I wonder is this ad model legal? Have you duscussed it with google?
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms says:
“5. Prohibited Uses:……(v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or “thank you” page (e.g., a page that thanks a user after he/she has registered with the applicable Web site), on any chat page,…..”
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