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October 31, 2006
Jotspot + Google = Joogle
Google continues in its acquisitive ways today with news that it has acquired Joe Krause's company, Jotspot. Big congrats to Joe.While it is bad news for other wiki vendors -- although that won't stop them from saying it "legitimates" (oooh, that word) their market -- it could hardly be better news for others (obPortfolioPimping: Like DabbleDB, of course, where I am a board member), that are rethinking how to use hosted services to collect, fold, spindle, and mutilate data. Google remains as interested as I am about data-drenched applications, and that is a good thing.
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Wouldn't the equation be:
Google + JotSpot = GSpot?
could it be that it legitimizes the technology, but not necessarily the business end of it - at least from jotspot's perception?
seems there are firms with some cool wiki solutions that have been able to build a strong business model around their solutions.
it might be bad news for other hosted wiki vendors, but not necessarily for *all* other wiki vendors.
and yes, i am biased.
Everyone is saying 'congratulations Joe', but is it really congratulations? Is this a success? Can it be said that at this very early stage in a company, being bought is a success? Isn't it a failure? Doesn't it admit that the company really had no chance of carving out its own territory? I suppose without knowing the price, we can't be absolutely sure - but it won't have been so high.
I used JotSpot, I really wanted it to work for my company, but we decided it was terrible. Hard to use and lots of things just didn't work. So maybe it's 'congratulations Joe for finding a way out of a bad situation, but not congratulations for building a successful company'?
Ivan,
I'm sure it's congratulations, just maybe not as big as a YouTube congrats. With hindsight, some of the consumer oriented things Joe was doing was positioning the company with a foot in both enterprise and consumer to make it more attractive to a Google or Yahoo. Whether this exit route has arrived earlier than expected is open to debate, but it must have been in his plan. We're Jot users, and although the product isn't perfect it continues to work well for us. And I think this acquisition will be good news for the topic in general and the other vendors, not just because of the PR blip caused by the current press attention, but longer term too.
It's possible that I'm too old (37) to be a techie anymore, but I've tried Jotspot and just didn't find it that useful. I'm interested in the Wiki concept but find the product lacks the required "user-friendliness" for enough people in my particular work group to use it regularly.
I did watch the DabbleDB demo when you posted it, Paul, and think it's an amazing product....I'd be interested to know how the company is progressing.
Richard