First Take: 37Signals Campfire

37 Signals have launched Campfire, the company's entry into the real-time chat space.

I spent a few minutes running around with my partner-in-crime, Greg Narain, and the service seem cleanly designed (big surprise), fast (we'll have to see about that), and extremely intuitive.

As a few seconds of registration, I was quickly presented with my Campfire Lobby (a bit of a mixed metaphor there), and my first chat. I invited Greg in a few seconds, and we were rolling. The chat interface works in the obvious way, by entering text into a box at the foot of the window.

One of the great features of Campfire is uploading of images into the chatstream:

Greg and I apparently use the word 'neat' alot, as I found with this search:

And this screenshot shows the obvious business model:

So Jason Fried and Co. are hoping to provide a baseline level of chat, outside the conventional IM networks and chat systems, under the assumption that business is ripe for this sort of service. I buy it, especially if they integrate it into Basecamp, which has not been done yet.

And please do a better and tighter job of integrating chat into Basecamp projects than was done with Writeboards. That is not a seamless integration at all.

I am not sure that Campfire, independent of Basecamp, has a real path forward, even though I am a strong supporter of real-time communication, Web 2.0 apps, and Basecamp. There is a tremendous degree of competition here, these days. Leaving aside IRC -- a really entrenched community of hardcore bitheads, there.-- there are more and more competitors on every side. Gmail Chat has emerged, along with whatever version of the major IM networks are out there, and now there are literally dozens of VoIP competitors. AOL has big plans for AIMSpace, an IM-based collaboration and social networking scheme. And Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are close behind.

As a Basecamp user, I am dying to see it integrated. As an analyst and student of the space I wonder if the unintegrated Campfire has a solid future. I could be wrong, but I will wait and see.

[Pointer from Steve Rubel].

tags: steve+rubel, jason+fried, 37signals, basecamp, campfire, irc, aimspace, yahoo, microsoft, google, gmail, gchat, online+chat, instant+messaging

Comments

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

Thanks for giving Campfire a spin, Stowe. I'd recommend giving it a try with more than two people, though. That's where it really shines. For 1-1's, I'd definitely rather be using IM too. Campfire is not really trying to improve or solve that problem -- others have done it very well.

But when you're trying to coordinate something between 3, 4, or in our case, 7 people, then IM plain sucks. And IRC is simply way too techy. And neither of them does file sharing or transcripts very well. That's the pain Campfire is aimed at alleviating.

[Jason Fried]

Thanks for the feedback Stowe. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there that don't use Basecamp but have an immediate need for real-time group communication. You can use MS Project, Dot Project, or any of the other project management apps and still use Campfire. Or you don't have to use it with project management at all, of course. At 37signals we've been using it for over a month and we can't live without it -- it's become the best productivity tool we have.

[theCreator]

I agree with Jason. There is no immediate need to integrate campfire into basecamp. Campfire is best suited for developer group chats with clients. As for friends, well... i think IM would suffice.