
Olark (YC S09) Brings Chat to Any Website - Whether You Own the Site or Not - bcx
http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/olark.php#more
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geuis
I'm not denigrating the Olark product, but does the world need another chat
service? Of all the problems out there that need to be solved, I personally
can't get excited about another site feature as the primary product of a
startup. This is something that has been done over and over again through the
years.

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catch23
That's what they said about search before Google came around!

Altavista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, do we really need another search engine? Why do
you think Google will be better than Altavista?

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zhyder
This example has been beaten to death. Google was at least an order of
magnitude better than other search engines, and was the first that actually
_worked_ , so it didn't matter how crowded the space was.

When evaluating an opportunity, "___ is a competitive/crowded space", "___ has
already won this market", or "does the world need another ___" are all valid
objections to raise. The rebuttal should be "but ___ is better/different
because of ___" rather than a comparison to Google.

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beagle3
Back in '2000 or so, there were approximately 40 products in that space - I
counted because I was working on one. They all required some form of download
- and non of them got critical mass.

Odigo Communicator; ICQ Surf; Zadu; Hypernix Gooey; Cahoots GetWebby; and a
whole lot more. Also, there was an IE addin called 3rd voice that let you
annotate a site for others.

I wonder if now is a better time for this kind of products.

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jamesbritt
I especially liked hoodwink'd. :)

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robryan
Meebo have just branched out into embeded chat as well. I think these guys
might struggle.

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axod
Meebo rooms hasn't really taken off much as far as I'm aware. I think there's
plenty of room in the market.

Olark looks cool :) Might have to up my game a bit.

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uggedal
Reminds me of _why's Hoodwink.d

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rishi
I really liked their old name Hab.la

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JMiao
i thought they were a translation service.

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Leon
I would like to refer the community to Zawinkski's Law of Software
Envelopment[1]

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

And propose a new, modified law for the current generation:

"Every Web 2.0 website attempts to expand until it can chat. Those Web 2.0
websites which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski>

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omouse
Hey, this idea sounds familiar...

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simplegeek
Good one. But there is this similar service that I really like bumpin.com.

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simplegeek
Last time I checked bumpin.com their UI was much better. But I guess they've
added lots of dark color & strange fonts onto their website ;(

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sh1mmer
I met these guys in Michigan before they moved. Lots of promise, I think this
is going to be really interesting. I really hope they will get to a place to
take LivePerson on.

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suhail
Congrats guys, Olark rocks =)

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judegomila
echo, disqus, olark, meebo - interesting area.......

