Comments on: Y Combinator’s WriteWith Launches - Collaborative Blogging

By: TechCrunch en français » Google rachète Zenter pour son application PowerPoint en ligne. La suite office de Google presque complète

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 05:46:30 +0000

[...] pouvez lire les autres billets des sociétés de Y Combinator (comme Weebly, Buxfer, Writewith, Overhear.us, Snipshot, Justin.tv, et Xobni) ici et [...]

By: Abhishek

Abhishek — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:58:46 +0000

Y Combinator has some really weird bunch of companies. Don’t know how do most of them plan to make money..may be its the build and sell kind of revenue model they r looking at.

By: nutcase

nutcase — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:19:27 +0000

How come TechCrunch publicizes all the shitty Y Combinator companies ad nauseum…while truly innovative companies get shut out?

By: Ron Diggity

Ron Diggity — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:16:49 +0000

Y Combinator really sucks at picking innovative applications. Y Combinator is a me too, venture capital firm.

By: notAnotherWiki

notAnotherWiki — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:57:48 +0000

Oh no! Not another Wiki startup. Looks like Paul Graham and his army of no-salary founders have forgotten to think out of the box. Wiki, blogs and source control - all three tried and tested ideas. So what else is new? Paul Graham is getting a bunch of low grade html writers for a few crumbs of pizzas and drinks - how brilliant an idea can you expect from them. Laughing stock of the valley.

By: Celia

Celia — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:01:54 +0000

sorry, http://www.publicsquarehq.com (stupid long URLs) for compare/contrast.

By: Celia

Celia — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:00:41 +0000

This looks almost exactly like PublicSquare http://www.publicsquahq.com except without all the useful social media stuff. Who are the founders– a couple of Boxes and Arrows authors who ripped off the interface and functionality?

By: km4

km4 — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:38:28 +0000

WriteWith: Everybody Point and Laugh

Ted / 12.Apr.2007

Finding content for this blog is so easy. All I need to do is head over to TechCrunch and look at whatever startup-lube they are using to jerk eachother off with.

http://www.uncov.com/2007/4/12.....-and-laugh

By: yangxiao

yangxiao — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:40:37 +0000

It’s different from google docs because it’s a blog.
Google Docs is not user-friendly to be published and be accessed.

By: The Pageman

The Pageman — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:24:43 +0000

if it’s an alternative to a blog, then …

By: RaJ

RaJ — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:36:51 +0000

Thanks for the post. I registered and tried with few post. But this site is not so easy to use. Yea its too early to say & wait for week though with more collabs.

~RaJ
http://www.suggestusability.com

By: Ioannus de Verani

Ioannus de Verani — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:01:51 +0000

@Chris: I agree. While this is kind of neat, and Web 2.0-ish, why shouldn’t I just use Google Docs? This is simpler, so that may have some appeal, but Google Docs is about 20 times better! No reason to use this program except for play, IMHO.

By: DonImus

DonImus — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 01:37:31 +0000

Sounds like a very niche product..not quite dumb, but close.
Sounds like another feature company from Y-Combinator.
I can’t see how it can stand-alone.

What exactly what is the revenue model here? exit strategy?

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Y CombinatorのWriteWithローンチ。ブログでのコラボを実現

TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Y CombinatorのWriteWithローンチ。ブログでのコラボを実現 — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:05:55 +0000

[...] [原文へ] writewith YCombinator [...]

By: Wes

Wes — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:06:35 +0000

It looks like this is a well thought application but the best bit is the ability to compare versions and then assign a task. I can achieve this now using versioning software but this looks like a better approach.

By: Quinn

Quinn — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:41:12 +0000

I’ve been using Coventi Pages for group editing for a while, and everybody really likes it. Highly recommended.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:06:50 +0000

Approver.com has also had this feature for some time now.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:51:48 +0000

i was surprised to read this, as I have been working on a quite similar system for a while. It has just gone live a few hours ago on http://www.theopendoc.com and is a very easy and fast collaborative tool for sharing text documents. Whereas on Writewith you have to create a user to create a document, you don’t on TheOpenDoc.com. On Google Apps, it is even more complicated as all users need to be logged in to view or edit.

So, I got the idea while writing minutes from a meeting, and I wanted to send an e-mail to everyone going “here is the link to my minutes. feel free to add whatever you think is missing”. This is basically what would be too complicated in Google Apps, as the document needs to be accessed much easier, like with one click. Well, anyway, check it out and see it for yourself! An example is http://www.theopendoc.com/12

By: Eric Berlin

Eric Berlin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:37:54 +0000

This is a much needed and useful innovation for those involved in multi-person and highly active content production environments. Looking forward to checking it out.

And right on for Binghamton University!

~ Proud alumnus, class of ‘96

By: rod

rod — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:07:27 +0000

Here’s a question: does such a system reflect realworld workflow, or just an idealized version there of? I ask because every collaboration system I’ve used, from Word with “Reviewing” turned on to Ray Ozzie’s “Groove” product, has generally gotten ditched quickly.

Check in / check out and versioning gets confusing quickly.
Small groups can just do it ad hoc faster than with a system.
Large groups end up overburdening the cvs system and creating a morass.

I don’t think anyone’s hit the sweetspot here, and from what I see so far, neither has writewith.

-rod
http://www.techfold.com

By: Anshul

Anshul — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:01:56 +0000

I dont see the difference between Google docs and this. Apart from the fact that you dont need to sign into writewith.

By: Larry Honig

Larry Honig — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:53:14 +0000

Ahem. Drupal has an excellent, free workflow model which allows uber-users to define subusers, and then to assign roles to these subusers. Another very mature Drupal module allows the definition of multiple workflows, attaching different appropriate workflows to various elements of a site’s taxonomy (my user of their terminology is intentional; it is well-thought through.) Again, under the control of the uber-user’s definition, multiple versions of each post can be maintained for rollback. This is a much more grown-up version of the simple ’submit/edit/publish’ workflow that I would imagine is in use on Techcrunch itself. (n.b. - Michael Arrington - if I am wrong about that, kindly post something about the actual mechanics of the tool and workflow that runs this site - I’d love to know.)

Anybody who has actually worked putting words on paper or the web in a production environment recognizes that the workflow concept is essential to controlling chaos, and that letting multiple folks simultaneously check out, or SVN, or whatever, almost guarantees chaos - just think back to your high school newspaper and imagine how bad it can get if the tool lets more than one person move something from step to step. There is a real good reason why a newspaper evolves into some sort of hierarchy; the alternative is anarchy. (Even that paragon of socially-acceptable anarchy, Wikipedia, does something analagous by letting admins post ‘rapid delete’ tags. There are always some users who are more equal than others; call them admins, editors, or purple pachyderms - the principle is the same.)

Oh, and did I mention that Drupal is FREE? (as in speech, as in beer)

Did I mention it scales pretty well. The Onion’s website is Drupal. Howard Dean’s campaign used an early fork of Drupal, CivicSpace, to ‘revolutionize’ (their word, not mine) the social networking money raising business in the last election cycle.

Did I mention that there are hundreds of thousands of Drupaloids out there developing new modules and themes, etc. etc. Did I mention that you can post a meager bounty, on the order of $100, and within hours have dozens of eager applicants to extend the code to your requirements?

And did I mention that Drupal is FREE?? (ahem, that magic word.)

By: beng

beng — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:43:57 +0000

Chris, because when you are done with your group collab in the authoring process, it’s just a blog the readers.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:39:53 +0000

So how is this different from Google Docs? I already collaborate on documents all the time with multiple people, it saves every revision, it’s free and fully integrated with my email.

If Google Calendar can kill Kiko (according to Paul Graham) then why can’t Google Docs kill WriteWith. Change the display of Google Docs a.k.a Writely a little bit and it’s essentially the same thing, except that there are already millions of people with Gmail accounts. Paul Graham’s name will get you a long way, but I don’t see how it can compete with that.

By: eas

eas — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:31:14 +0000

beng, since the app is web based, I think the overdue checkout problem is mitigated because the document doesn’t live in some sort of persistent store (like the filesystem)