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Pibb - it’s not just a great soda, it’s also a new comprehensive communications tool
I was checking out on of my favorite blogs this evening.. that is the one of Chris Messina… and he had a review of BarCamp Portland. In the review he discusses a new comprehensive communications tool (CCT) called Pibb. Now I remember Pibb. My roomate in college loved Mr. Pibb. Oh boy he drank that soda day and night!
Anyway, back to this new Pibb. I have played with this for a bit now and am really impressed. I love the multi-threaded discussions. Pibb is built using the GWT (Google Web Toolkit). This tool looks like a great way to communicate as a team. You can invite people to your Pibb Channel. I could see using this for a new product launch and having multiple streams of discussion within the channel. What's great is that then the tech team can see what's going on in marketing and vice-versa.
I guess I think of it as a very fancy IRC plus a top notch message board.
Chris notes one issue, "Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there are permalinks available for the transcripts, but I’ve put in a request to the developers who were on-site for such a feature."
And I have one item that I think will hinder their ability to grow quickly/exponentially. It's the forced OpenID requirement. Yes, OpenID is growing, we have it as an option on CN for login. But it should be just that for now. An option. Don't force it on the average non-geeks unless you only want your app to be geek-friendly. Eventually OpenId might become the standard protocol for login services, but for now, offer me a choice.
Update: Chris sent over this quote regarding the OpenID after reading the above, "This app, and the other JanRain projects, are important in that they dispense with archaic siloed user accounts and require the use of the decentralized OpenID authentication system. We'll probably start to see more of this, as we have on AOL's Ficlets."
Here is a screenshot from the BarCamp Channel (Chris has some additional screenshots on Flickr):
Looks functionally a heck of a lot like Tangler, an Australian startup that’s gone public beta recently.
I’ve done an interview with Tangler CEO, Martin Wells, that I’ll be using as the basis for an article on Web Worker Daily in the next couple of weeks.
Interesting that you mention Tangler Steven. Chris and I were discussing it as a follow-up post for Monday.
Let me know when you post your interview and I will link it up!
Allen:
Great post but I have a question about Pibb. I’ve been searching around a lot lately for a Live Help program to put on my real estate site. Do you think Pibb would work for this? Perhaps the OpenID would scare people off or make it lose it’s appeal. I just can’t find one that’s easy to use and easy to integrate. Any tips?
for live chat and customer interaction there is no better than..
http://www.chatstat.com
Many real estate companies use this solution.
Looks an awful lot like 37 Signals’ Campfire.
Pibb is nice, but in fairness it seems tough to get a feeling of ‘community’. It seriously feels so empty..
Whereas, I’ve signed up to Tangler this evening (Username: MattUK - feel free to add me!) and really find using the service enjoyable.
Best,
Matt
I’ve been looking for something similar to this but where I can use the component on my own website rather than generating data on the vendor’s website like Pibb is doing.
Does anyone know if there’s something similar to this type of chat, but where you can host it yourself? Either open-source or not?