I'm not denigrating the Olark product, but does the world need another chat service? Of all the problems out there that need to be solved, I personally can't get excited about another site feature as the primary product of a startup. This is something that has been done over and over again through the years.

I think chat (especially applied in small commercial sites) is nowhere near its potential.

Actually the fact that LivePerson still charges an arm and leg for their product is a sign it matters.

"does the world need another ____?" to me reads: "____ is perfect and needs no further iteration."

That's what they said about search before Google came around!

Altavista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, do we really need another search engine? Why do you think Google will be better than Altavista?

This example has been beaten to death. Google was at least an order of magnitude better than other search engines, and was the first that actually worked, so it didn't matter how crowded the space was.

When evaluating an opportunity, "___ is a competitive/crowded space", "___ has already won this market", or "does the world need another ___" are all valid objections to raise. The rebuttal should be "but ___ is better/different because of ___" rather than a comparison to Google.

true. i think the parent question is more about adding "goodness" to the world, and less about commercial success.

my personal opinion is that search, which sates the quest for information, is a problem worth solving. chat, at least as the text-based instant message kind of things, creates problems. or rather, it's an opportunity loss.

the fact that i'm talking means i'm not listening. even if this weren't procrastination, even if my main goal in life was to communicate with strangers better, is IM helping me get there? is this the problem olark wants to solve, or do they just want to make yet another IM service?

(ps - i think visually. i communicate best with diagrams. discussions with my husband require a whiteboard or paper scrap. i'd love a communication company whose mission was to prevent misunderstandings. make exchanging perspectives faster, help us get along and respect each other while disagreeing, help us make decisions better.)

yes, the world needs an improved chat service

Back in '2000 or so, there were approximately 40 products in that space - I counted because I was working on one. They all required some form of download - and non of them got critical mass.

Odigo Communicator; ICQ Surf; Zadu; Hypernix Gooey; Cahoots GetWebby; and a whole lot more. Also, there was an IE addin called 3rd voice that let you annotate a site for others.

I wonder if now is a better time for this kind of products.

I especially liked hoodwink'd. :)

Meebo have just branched out into embeded chat as well. I think these guys might struggle.

Meebo rooms hasn't really taken off much as far as I'm aware. I think there's plenty of room in the market.

Olark looks cool :) Might have to up my game a bit.

Reminds me of _why's Hoodwink.d

I really liked their old name Hab.la

i thought they were a translation service.

I would like to refer the community to Zawinkski's Law of Software Envelopment[1]

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

And propose a new, modified law for the current generation:

"Every Web 2.0 website attempts to expand until it can chat. Those Web 2.0 websites which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

Hey, this idea sounds familiar...

Good one. But there is this similar service that I really like bumpin.com.

Last time I checked bumpin.com their UI was much better. But I guess they've added lots of dark color & strange fonts onto their website ;(

I met these guys in Michigan before they moved. Lots of promise, I think this is going to be really interesting. I really hope they will get to a place to take LivePerson on.

Congrats guys, Olark rocks =)

echo, disqus, olark, meebo - interesting area.......