Y Combinator’s WriteWith Launches - Collaborative Blogging
Nick Gonzalez
27 comments »
We mentioned WriteWith in a roundup post last month on new Y Combinator startups. They’ve created a group writing platform that falls somewhere between a blogging platform, a wiki, and an online Word clone. The best part of it is that it works with the existing Wordpress and Typepad blogging software.
Current blogging software is rather kludgy when it comes to working with other writers on posts. To collaborate on a document in Wordpress, you have to share a draft link with a friend and also create an account for that person. And even then, you only have one version of the document, causing old versions to be lost by new revisions. WriteWith may eventually change that for blogs and any other online publishing platform.
Background
Two of the founders originally got the idea for the system when writing at their college newspapers, the Stanford Daily and Binghamton’s Pipedream. They wanted to find a better way to move articles from thought to the printed word, while handling revisions made by as many as 6 people along the way. Their first product was a newsroom, complete with administrative features for managing an articles lifecycle. That product has been used by 15 college newspapers across the US and Canada, including Stanford and the University of Alberta, which runs a national newswire. Licenses for other enterprise content management applications for newspapers, like Managing Editor, can cost upwards of $100,000.
The WriteWith team then stepped back, re-evaluated the publishing business and started designing for pixels over print. The new version is more flexible than their newsroom product and tailored specifically for managing collaboratively edited text online. And when I say text, it really is just for text. WriteWith’s text editor is taken straight out of the Dojo ajax library and doesn’t display complex WYSIWYG layout information. However, WriteWith’s focus is on editing, not the editor.
Collaboration
Making a document begins by starting right in the editor, or uploading a document to the site (.doc, .txt, .rtf, Open Office). Once a document is started, you can invite other people to see and edit it by email without their needing to create an account. When you go to a document page you’ll see the latest version, a list of previous versions, a message board, and task assignments. Everyone invited to edit and view a document has the equal ability to edit a document, assign tasks to each other, and post messages to the board.
WriteWith handles the potential chaos through communication and simple version control, which adds a new version of the document to the history each time a user makes an edit. The individual versions can then be compared, with the differences between each version highlighted. The live message board and tasks help to guide these revisions. Any user can assign another user a task by typing it into a task message box or post a note to the message board. When it’s agreed that the document is completed, it can then be published to a blog (Wordpress, Typepad) or downloaded (.doc, .txt, .rtf, Open Office).
There’s a growing need for collaborative editing platforms as blogging becomes a more established business and the ranks of their writers grow. WriteWith may be the solution that fills that need.
The whole “check out” model is how source version control used to work, until cvs and now subversion came around.
The problem with the “check out” model is people tend to keep things checked out too long, locking the content until it is checked in, at which point someone else can check out.
It makes for a not very streamlined process, and a lot of IM’s like this…”hey, can you check that back in so I can add my change”.
CVS and SVN flip this, there is no check out process. Instead, conflicts are resolved at check in time. This tends to work better, as people are “rewarded” for being quick, not slow.
- honestly I will be a user - I have been sending back and fourth word docs for my friend and I to edit - and then we loose what has been edited - out - maybe forever …
- this sounds great ..
-RB
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)
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.
Chris, because when you are done with your group collab in the authoring process, it’s just a blog the readers.
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.)
I dont see the difference between Google docs and this. Apart from the fact that you dont need to sign into writewith.
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
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
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
Approver.com has also had this feature for some time now.
I’ve been using Coventi Pages for group editing for a while, and everybody really likes it. Highly recommended.
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.
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?
@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.
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
if it’s an alternative to a blog, then …
It’s different from google docs because it’s a blog.
Google Docs is not user-friendly to be published and be accessed.
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
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?
sorry, http://www.publicsquarehq.com (stupid long URLs) for compare/contrast.
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.
Y Combinator really sucks at picking innovative applications. Y Combinator is a me too, venture capital firm.
How come TechCrunch publicizes all the shitty Y Combinator companies ad nauseum…while truly innovative companies get shut out?
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.