Jason Fried on Campfire

I recently reviewed Campfire, the new real-time group chat solution from 37signals. My first take was this:

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.

Jason Fried of 37signals responded in a comment on that post:

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.

I agree that there are a lot of people out there that don’t use Basecamp, and many of them may be interested in a solution like Campfire. But there are so many competitors, and so many impediments for people that are used to what ever they are using — IRC, AIM, whatever — that I wonder about the uptake. And also, I really want it integrated in Basecamp, where I manage my projects. Bad.