Interview with zpeech founder, Tim Rohrer

This week, I gave the free ad slot to zpeech. Zpeech is a way to create a discussion board about any web site. You just add the web site you want to discuss at the end of the zpeech.com URL and then you can either join the existing discussion or start a new one. I chatted with one of the co-founders, Tim Rohrer, about zpeech and tried to get some juicy bits about what is being discussed on zpeech. Tim shares some detailed information about his web app along with what the web market is like in Germany. We conclude the chat with his advice for others wanting to create a web app.

Allen: Can you provide a brief background about yourself?

Tim Rohrer: My name is Tim Rohrer, I am 26 years old and I live in Germany. I have been working for DaimlerChrysler in their web based media departments for 4 years and am currently self-employed. At the moment I am working on several different online projects like leselupe.de (a german literature community with 3,300 authors and 50,000 stories and poems) and zpeech.com - with a big focus on zpeech.

Allen: What is Zpeech?

Tim: Zpeech is a Web 2.0 application that enables anybody to comment any website on the website itself. By adding "zpeech.com/" in front of any URL a "zpeechboard" (discussionboard) pops up where you can post your comments to that very website. Anybody who accesses the website in the same way sees your comment and can join in the discussion. You could call zpeech a matrix in the internet.

For the users zpeech offers for the first time the opportunity to share own and profit from experiences, ideas, hints, warnings other users made on any website. Think of websites with news, stocks, sports, politics or shops. Don't you sometimes wish to be able to comment on these sites?! And do you want to do it even on websites that don't offer comment functions? And don't you want to be sure that you are safe of censorship?! That's zpeech - freedom of zpeech!

Additionally - and not to forget - you can also just have some fun and start "funny" discussions about e.g. Paris Hilton on her website (http://zpeech.com/parishilton.com) , talk about Seinfeld on his website (http://zpeech.com/seinfeld.com), discuss Cheeseburgers on mcdonalds.com (http://zpeech.com/mcdonalds.com) or whatever…

For websites and blogs zpeech offers advantages, too. As a new service is added to the website, the page impressions can rise. We already have some websites being zpeeched with thousands of zpeech impressions. The good, real and unfiltered comments of the users on the website are to be understood as worthwhile input. Websites see what the users think, what they like and what they do not like, which other websites the users visit and finally who their users are. Websites can even enable zpeech.com on their websites as the default discussionboard just by linking to their zpeech URL (zpeech.com/your-website-url.com). Some websites already use this service.

If a website is interested in co branded skins of the zpeechboard, this is possible, too. We are happy to answer any requests concerning this.

Allen: Where did the name come from?

Tim: The name comes from "freedom of speech", which is our credo.

Allen: Is there a team at Zpeech? If so, what is the makeup?

Tim: Yes. It´s three of us. Jan Wege being responsible for programming the zpeechboards and the "heavy" things. Georg Heuschen for the website, layout and marketing. Me for marketing, press, organization and all the rest. And everybody for great new ideas.

Allen: Can you share some information about your users? Which sites are "talked about" the most so far? Any juicy bits?

Tim: The most zpeeched is about google. There are almost 100 comments so far. We have comments on youtube, cnet, amazon, yahoo and even a lot of discussions on zpeech.com itself - a "metameta discussion". Have a look at http://www.zpeech.com/websites.html to get a complete overview about all websites. Currently we have a lot of german sites being discussed, but after this interview we hope for more and more English ones! We also have a lot of French, Italian, Chinese and Iranian discussion. We didn't have UTF8 (characters format) enabled in the beginning, because we did not think of Chinese users in the first days. Looked funny…

We started about 6 weeks ago. Currently we have about 420 users with 1,400 comments on 450 pages (of potentially approximately 100 million websites with unlimited pages worldwide). This will grow within the next weeks, as we start communication and marketing, now.

Allen: If I use your service and I am the site owner, can I delete comments if I feel there is a need to?

Tim: No. Websites cannot influence what's written on their website. That would not be the freedom of zpeech one expects. But websites can disable/block zpeech on their domain completely if they want to. We hope that not many websites have to hide something and need to do this. Sure, the freedom of zpeech has limits. When users cross certain borders (that everybody should know and that are explained in our terms of use) we have to ensure that these are deleted. Your own freedom ends where the others begins.

Allen: Who are your competitors?

Tim: There are no direct competitors yet. Firefox offers a similar service as a plugin, Google a "notepad". There is fleck, cocomment, folkd… But all these applications have to be downloaded and are not decentralized. Zpeech is decentralized, you can access it, your account and your comments from any PC on the world just by adding zpeech.com/ in front of any URL. And it's independent of browsers or whatever.

Additionally, there are similar services like zpeech for chatting on websites like gabbly or yaplet. But not for permanent comments and nothing as beautiful as zpeech ;-)

Allen: Is Zpeech funded? Looking for funding?

Tim: No, we funded zpeech ourselves. AdSense earns us some cents, but yes - a funding would offer further great opportunities for the next 6-9 months…

Allen: What's coming in the next 6-9 months for Zpeech?

Tim: Lots of things are planned and I only want to give a brief overview: We want to advance the zpeechboards to real discussionboards with threats and answers. We want to build a benchmarking and suggestion tool out of zpeech. We want to offer further services for websites and blogs. We are looking for cooperation to bring zpeech to a wider audience. (Feel free to contact me!) We want to offer a plugin. And we will offer an advanced, professional account. Looks like a lot to do. A lot can be done without funding, some needs support.

Allen: What's the web market like in Germany? Do you find it harder to succeed than if you were in San Francisco?

Tim: I do not know the web market in San Francisco, unfortunately. I can only imagine - it must be great and inspiriting. But I like Germany. We are probably - at least - some months behind the US but a lot is happening at the moment. We recently had the 10th million ".de" Domain registered, everybody is going mad for Web 2.0, a lot of ideas are copied from US examples, everybody uses google (almost 80% marketshare, I hear), blogs are rising but there is still a huge potential (France has 20 times more blogs per inhabitant than Germany), we have lots of high bandwidth connections now and it feels like everybody is online. You see, a lot is going on in Germany and I like it here. However we decided to launch zpeech in English to give everybody in the world the chance to test and use zpeech from the beginning.

Allen: What's your marketing plan been like? I saw your initial review by Molly at Screeniac and Webware and am wondering what other marketing you have done, if any?

Tim: We haven't done a lot of marketing yet. I wrote to some blogs and hope that bloggers and users like the idea and spread it. At the moment we are looking for companies that are interested and interesting to be connected with zpeech in a technical or marketing way. In your great blog I get the great opportunity to give an interview and explain the idea behind zpeech. Again, everybody feel free to contact us, we have open ears…

Allen: What tips can you share on managing your time? Do you do anything that is really a must-have for a startup or freelancer? What do you believe are the most important things that a startup must have to be successful?

Tim: You need time, task and a goal plan. And you should make a business plan in which you forecast monthly earnings and spending - there should be the potential of a "+" before you have spent all you budget. Sounds simple.

Allen: What is the greatest business lesson you have learned in your career?

Tim: In the internet business? Concentration on a few projects/issues is often better than making heaps of things with 10% concentration. And hold on to your ideas.

Generally? A saying, I heard a year ago, impressed me very much: "If you want to be successful in the long term follow two experiences I made. 1. When things are going bad, do not get depressed. 2. When things are going brilliant, stay on earth."

Allen: What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a business?

Tim: In the internet you can try almost any idea with a few thousand dollars. So, give it a try!

Allen: Which new RSS feeds are you reading these days?

Tim: German literature and news rss feeds. And obviously our zpeech rss feed (http://www.zpeech.com/zpeechblog/feed/)! And I´ve got some google eMail alerts. That´s it.

That´s it ;-) Thank you!