To repost what I said over at Ajaxian, I can not see how this service could possibly be anything more than a novelty. I've never been at a website before and though, “Gee, I wish I could chat with other people browsing this website right now… about this website.†… Most large websites (the only ones where you’d be likely to find more than one person browsing through this thing) that have ANY reason for chat or forums, already have chat or forums. Other than that, if I want to talk to people, I’ll go to the sites already designated for that. The only way this works is if site owners embrace it and link to their Gabbly URL. But as a site owner, if you want to offer chat to your users for any any reason (support, general interaction, etc.) there are a number of other solutions tailored specifically to whatever use you are after... and it would make much more sense, in my opinion, to go with one of those rather than a gimmicky thing like Gabbly.
Pete Cashmore
· 3 years ago
Josh,
Agreed!
Paul Montgomery
· 3 years ago
I fail to see how it sucks less that 3Bubbles in any meaningful way.
MayWeHelp, inc. is a browser-based, one-to-one chat technology company that was founded by Chris Matthieu back in 1999. It can be embedded into any web page or blog post and it offers all of the features of the big CRM companies like: presence, chat waiting, browser redirects, automated FAQ responses, knowledge base, reporting, etc.
Perhaps we should update the look of the site and reintroduce it as a Web 2.0? What do you think Pete?
Pete Cashmore
· 3 years ago
Chris,
Add some ajax and you'll be good to go! :)
Josh
· 3 years ago
Chris, definitely. You also might be interested in checking out industry leaders in this area like BoldChat, LivePerson, and Kayako (which makes liberal use of AJAX these days) to see what sort of thing they offer. In terms of CRM their backend offers a lot to business owners.
Dima
· 3 years ago
The only difference is that Gabbly is free meanwhile :) By the way, they have an embed option now.
In Ajaxian's post about Gabbly, they linked to a site called WizLite that does collaborative page highlighting... which seems must more useful. Add in Chatsum's ability to leave notes for future visitors, and that could be a great tool for people who are doing collaborative research on the Internet (such as in a classroom setting).
Yep, I'm aware of Wizlite - it's from the same coder and designer as Blummy. A neat little tool.
Charles
· 3 years ago
I reckon Gabbly is pretty cool. It is definitely not that useful for most blogs, although for well trafficked sites like Boing Boing or Digg I can see it working pretty well.
I don't thinking blogs are necessarily the killer use case for these types of app. I'm thinking about SXSW sessions, all with their own webpage...bingo an instant backchannel. The interesting thing that it is does is create some proximity amongst otherwise anonymous visitors. I can imagine all sorts of instances when this would be useful. What about Gabbly on Wikipedia? [must try]
The point about the long term value of the [user] generated content from these apps is valid though. Hmmm. With the availability of RSS feeds it might be solvable.
Clay Cook
· 3 years ago
Does it auto load over your webpage each time? Or are you able to action it to load up?
If it is auto loaded, it takes up far too much real estate for people who have not opted in for it.
We are considering chat for our site, but have not made any decisions as yet.
Pete Cashmore
· 3 years ago
Hi Clay,
Hmm...well the version I used was on a gabbly domain, but there's also an embedded version (ie. cut and paste some code). I expect it's auto-load, but I'm sure it wouldn't take much tweaking to change that. 3Bubbles has a pop-up window that appears when you hit a "live chat" link, so that's always an option.
Frits
· 3 years ago
Cool, looks a bit like e-Messenger, but only local chats are allowed i See....
Gideon Marken
· 3 years ago
Pete - I recently added a Gabbly chat window to the Map Mashup page on ArtistServer (which will soon be 'added' to the site).
I think you'll find that in this kind of context, an app like Gabbly works very well. Users can chat while listening to and browsing music by genre in a map.
In a sense - the users are now a part of the mashup. :)
You guys all miss the point and billiance of this idea. Large websites have their own chatrooms, but you if you find an interesting comment, you can't go to other sites they've commented on so easily. I've been posting on blogs for a while now, and I can't even find my own comments unless i remember to e-mail them to myself... I'm using chatsum, and will leave a copy of my note on the chatsum page for this blog.
All Comments
Agreed!
Suckiness is in the eye of the beholder.
MayWeHelp, inc. is a browser-based, one-to-one chat technology company that was founded by Chris Matthieu back in 1999. It can be embedded into any web page or blog post and it offers all of the features of the big CRM companies like: presence, chat waiting, browser redirects, automated FAQ responses, knowledge base, reporting, etc.
Perhaps we should update the look of the site and reintroduce it as a Web 2.0? What do you think Pete?
Add some ajax and you'll be good to go! :)
By the way, they have an embed option now.
http://www.yakalike.com/
Firefox plugin, it sits in the bottom conrner of the browser, and can be launched at any site.
Yep. See also: Chatsum.
http://wizlite.com/
Yep, I'm aware of Wizlite - it's from the same coder and designer as Blummy. A neat little tool.
I don't thinking blogs are necessarily the killer use case for these types of app. I'm thinking about SXSW sessions, all with their own webpage...bingo an instant backchannel. The interesting thing that it is does is create some proximity amongst otherwise anonymous visitors. I can imagine all sorts of instances when this would be useful. What about Gabbly on Wikipedia? [must try]
The point about the long term value of the [user] generated content from these apps is valid though. Hmmm. With the availability of RSS feeds it might be solvable.
If it is auto loaded, it takes up far too much real estate for people who have not opted in for it.
We are considering chat for our site, but have not made any decisions as yet.
Hmm...well the version I used was on a gabbly domain, but there's also an embedded version (ie. cut and paste some code). I expect it's auto-load, but I'm sure it wouldn't take much tweaking to change that. 3Bubbles has a pop-up window that appears when you hit a "live chat" link, so that's always an option.
I think you'll find that in this kind of context, an app like Gabbly works very well. Users can chat while listening to and browsing music by genre in a map.
In a sense - the users are now a part of the mashup. :)
You can check it out here:
http://www.ArtistServer.com/map.cfm
Large websites have their own chatrooms, but you if you find an interesting comment, you can't go to other sites they've commented on so easily. I've been posting on blogs for a while now, and I can't even find my own comments unless i remember to e-mail them to myself...
I'm using chatsum, and will leave a copy of my note on the chatsum page for this blog.