{"id":210,"date":"2006-02-12T21:56:10","date_gmt":"2006-02-13T02:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2006\/02\/12\/3bubbles-is-cool-but-so-what\/"},"modified":"2006-02-12T21:56:10","modified_gmt":"2006-02-13T02:56:10","slug":"3bubbles-is-cool-but-so-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/02\/12\/3bubbles-is-cool-but-so-what\/","title":{"rendered":"3bubbles is cool — but so what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate to be a curmudgeon, but I just don’t see the point of something like 3bubbles.com, which Mike Arrington at TechCrunch profiled recently<\/a>. I mean, my first response as a geek was hey, this is cool. Click on a link and see a little window pop up where you can chat in real time? That’s cool. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to agree with Pete Cashmore of Mashable, who says he’s skeptical<\/a>, and Zoli Erdos, who is similarly unimpressed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I could see a limited number of situations where real-time chat would come in handy, including when you’re looking for tech support on a website, which is one of the only places I’ve seen it before now. But on a regular blog? I don’t see it. Plus, as fellow Canadian Larry Borsato notes<\/a>, chat kind of detracts from the commenting thing, which can be saved and viewed later by others. Would 3bubbles allow that? I don’t know. Maybe you could save the chats and then display them at some later point, like a conversation frozen in amber. I still prefer comments for a lot of reasons, as anyone who has read some<\/a> of my previous posts<\/a> will know.<\/p>\n

Kent also wonders how many blogs would be able to sustain<\/a> a chat conversation using 3bubbles, and answers “none.” And he notes that people sometimes “confuse a blue ribbon science project with a business.” An excellent point. I’m sure the gang at 3bubbles are just as nice as Stowe says they are<\/a>, but if they came to me looking for financing, I would send them on their way. Not every cool idea is a viable business. <\/p>\n

I could be wrong (it has been known to happen). Charlie O’Donnell of Union Square Ventures, who posted a comment here with a link to his own thoughts on the subject<\/a>, thinks it could be the start of something big, but I remain skeptical. My friend Mark Evans thinks more than one cool Web 2.0 business suffers from the same problem: lots of cool, not much business<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to be a curmudgeon, but I just don’t see the point of something like 3bubbles.com, which Mike Arrington at TechCrunch profiled recently. I mean, my first response as a geek was hey, this is cool. Click on a link and see a little window pop up where you can chat in real time? … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “3bubbles is cool — but so what?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}