
New Chat Thing Convore Is Google Wave Minus the Suck - pg
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26367/
======
buster
Like Google Wave? So does this have an open protocol? Server-to-Server
communication?

I don't see where it can be compared to wave. They seem to compare it to IRC,
but also IRC is a protocol, convore is just a service.

I still hope wave sees some progress as apache project. :(

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is why Wave failed. Nobody knew quite what it was. They still don't know.

Moreover: nobody cares. People do not care how the tools work. They care about
their problems. Having an online conversation in the right mode - not too
high-latency, yet not too synchronous, and not too disorganized - is a
problem. Users understand that IRC and Wave and Convore are all billed as
attempts to solve that problem. Therefore, they are all kind of alike.

If people actually use these tools for a while even non-engineers will
eventually come to understand the substantial differences between them, but
another way that Wave and Convore and IRC are all alike is that right now most
customers have never heard of them, let alone tried them, let alone figured
them out.

~~~
buster
It's a shame, really. Even in my job nobody seemed to "get it" when i tried to
explain benefits and the "real" nature of wave (that it's a protocol). And i'm
working in a heavily messaging (mail, etc.) oriented company. I got everyone
beta accounts and yet nobody got it. It was all about the sandbox/webclient. I
think Google did a lot wrong with the promotion of wave.

Anyway, i'm eagerly waiting for the completion of the incubator process on
apache[1] and will take another look at the state of wave afterwards. I still
think the project is one of the most underrated projects of the last years. I
very much hope that the project won't just die.

[1] [http://www.waveprotocol.org/wave-in-a-box/apache-
incubator-r...](http://www.waveprotocol.org/wave-in-a-box/apache-incubator-
roadmap)

~~~
axod
Anyone can write a protocol though. That's the easy bit.

They failed to create a killer _product_.

~~~
buster
First of all, i'd say designing a _good_ protocol is pretty much the hardest
and smartest work to do. Of course everyone can design a protocol to send a
messange from A to B. But you really think it is something _that_ easy to
design a complete protocol for messaging between a wide variety of clients and
servers? Take as much as possible usecases and edge cases into account and
make it really good? If it would that easy SMTP wouldn't have a big pile of
extension RFCs.

Everyone can write a website that let's people chat in groups, right? I mean..
really... THAT is easy. ;)

~~~
axod
I agree with you. Writing protocols, websites, creating new programming
languages... all relatively simple.

Getting people to use what you built is the hard bit.

------
motters
But I don't want to live in another walled garden where I can be spied on or
herded as a cash cow. What's needed are open protocols, like IRC or Wave.

------
Zakharov
"In chats, Convore ... automatically embeds images"

This seems risky. There's a lot of public IRC rooms I'd avoid if they allowed
anyone to show me anything they wanted. IRC solves this by not embedding
images, Wave solves this by being oriented towards small groups rather than
public discussions, forums solve this by making it difficult enough to
register that a ban matters. How is Convore going to solve this?

------
augustl
I don't consider centralized services "thing x if it was invented today", if
thing x can be distributed. The UI looks nice, and they did a great job. But
anyone can host IRC servers, only convore can host convore.

------
old-gregg
Personal experience here: Convore rocks. Take it from a long-time IRC junkie.
Dump Skype/IM for all your project-related chats and try using them and you
quickly will see why Convore works and works well.

I remember Chatterous trying a similar play but can't recall what happened to
them. Maybe the GUI wasn't so slick or maybe they pivoted into something we're
unaware of...

~~~
kul
Indeed, Chatterous are now A Thinking Ape and I believe making revenue in the
millions. I think they have one of the highest grossing iphone apps of all
time. [http://www.techvibes.com/blog/a-thinking-ape-settles-into-
va...](http://www.techvibes.com/blog/a-thinking-ape-settles-into-vancouver-
and-gets-serious-2011-01-12)

~~~
wallflower
A Thinking Ape is hiring engineers! And HN dedication is a plus!

> and it would be a definite plus if...

you are registered at and regularly read Hacker News (and send us your
username if you do)

<http://www.athinkingape.com/jobs>

------
dools
I'm interested in using Convore to host some work discussions we currently use
IRC for because of the "history" aspect and the fact I can grab the messages
through an API and import into my task management interface.

The only problem with it I have is the name! Maybe it's because I'm
Australian. We say it like "Con-vaw". Is that right? I can't imagine telling
someone in person "hey I was on CON-VAW the other night and this guy said such
and such". Really weird name but a nicely executed product.

~~~
rdouble
It does seem a bit difficult to pronounce with an Aussie accent. Since toilets
are dunnys, chickens are chooks, Brits are Poms and Americans are Seppos why
not just make a typical Australian linguistic move and make up some ridiculous
word to use instead? I'd suggest Convizza but maybe that's too obvious.

~~~
mahmud
Never heard "Seppos" before.

Most Aussies would probably take one of the -o or -ies/-ers "colliqualization"
rules :-) My bet is on _convo_.

------
jhrobert
IM for groups. Cool. Now I need to have this integrated with my other IMs. I
just can't have so many windows open at the same time (or can I?). Maybe
Google Chrome Destop Notification? Maybe <http://imo.im> ? just guessing.

Nice work.

~~~
ericflo
Thanks!

One of the things we really wanted to have before we launched was an initial
version of an API ready so that people could experiment with building things
like you describe. We've been happy so far that people have started to do just
that, including someone going so far as to start working on an Android client!
<https://github.com/Pewpewarrows/Convoid>

We happily encourage efforts to integrate with other services, although it can
be tricky due to our added layer of structure (topics) that both sets us
apart, but also makes it match up less cleanly with existing clients and
services.

~~~
jhrobert
I will get a look at your API. The one feature I will look for is the ability
to get the list of the members of a group (so that I can dynamically create a
wiki for them).

Maybe I can do that using <https://convore.com/api/groups/:group_id.json> \--
but where is the doc about what it returns?

Anyways, it's nice to see that more and more new services come with an (often
open) API. Well done :)

------
nicpottier
Hrmm.. the image upload is not as cool as I'd hope. Yes it includes it, but
you still need to upload and host it somewhere yourself.

This could be really killer if it allowed uploads of arbitrary attachments and
images. Could see it as an interesting way of keeping a log with a client.

~~~
ericflo
We've definitely heard this feedback from others, especially those coming from
other web-based chat products that tend to include this feature.

Right now we haven't offered this as a feature because we're a free app, and
hosting more than a few files and images would be cost prohibitive. We're
definitely open to building it in the future if it can be subsidized somehow,
or if we directly charge for it.

~~~
axod
FWIW, file upload is a drop in the ocean compared to the bandwidth of managing
a large number of chat users lines of chat ;)

~~~
jhrobert
Is this true? I have a similar issue. So far I too consider that hosting files
costs a lot, whereas bandwidth (for text) is reasonably cheap. Am I missing
something?

~~~
axod
The much worse cost is in policing content and dealing with illegal content.

------
eik3_de
Any experienced campfire users around that have tried convore? Can you
compare?

~~~
jarin
The one thing I'm really sad that Convore doesn't have is auto-formatting of
pasted code. Other than that it is basically like Campfire but with a lot of
public groups as well (you can make private groups too).

------
tarvaina
For another startup in the same space, see <http://flowdock.com/>

~~~
Ezku
Flowdock is intended to fill quite a different niche. It's supposed to
facilitate teamwork, not spontaneous group communication. But if that's what
you're looking for, Flowdock does do the job. I participated in the beta and
found it quite nice.

------
eagleal
Months ago I talked with a guy who was working on a similar idea
<http://tap.info>. (Well, the site is down as of now)

<http://oi53.tinypic.com/2w1wfn7.jpg> \- I can't find a better screenshot

------
stcredzero
_The service saves everything that's been said -- like Wave, only Convore
exists_

Seems TR is like news, only without _fact checking_. I was playing with Wave
just the other day.

EDIT: TR, not TC. Thanks, internet!

~~~
micrypt
...only it's _not TC_.

------
itsnotvalid
I need to say one thing though, how is this going to beat against Facebook
groups?

The "new" facebook groups can group chat (with online members of a group) and
also semi-message (via a news feed) and could potentially message a bunch of
guys in the group via facebook messages.

Of course they haven't done it to the point of having short topic threads of
any kind, which is what I like with concore. (in fact, every topic in a group
in convore is like a channel of its own.)

------
thwarted
Eventually, we'll settle on a conversation formatting that _really works_ for
the Internet.

------
keturn
Isn't this what we tried with Pibb? May they have a better go of it than Pibb
did.

------
oomkiller
I really liked being able to see what the other person was typing in wave,
made having a conversation quicker as I could beging typing a response while
they were still typing, like a real conversation.

~~~
ez77
And this was possible (in the 90's!) with good old ICQ...

~~~
freakwit
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_%28software%29>

1983 with talk. Anybody got anything earlier?

~~~
Groxx
1893: peeking over someone's shoulder as they use a typewriter to write you a
letter.

------
jsilence
Uhh wow, another very beautiful walled garden?

Ignore.

------
zwadia
If convore is making collaboration cooler.. then I think what Asana has is
superior as it currently stands.

I see convore as a great alternative to the Twitter hashtag. A richer, more
real-time, better indexed alternative. It can still use Twitter for Outreach
but the action is in convore.

