Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Posted September 22, 2006
eHub Interviews Lingr

You can also read this interview in Japanese at CNET Japan.

Thanks to Kenn Ejima and the Lingr team for this email interview.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Lingr: Our service is a web-based chat. The differentiators are as follows: 1. Super light and fast without any plugins, 2. No signup required, 3. Connecting people by tags, 4. Embedding images and movies directly in a chat room, 5. Allowing private use as well, 6. Chat logs are fully archived.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Lingr: We started Lingr as a trial of the technology called “Comet"- which wasn’t given any name at that time though. It was a technique to accomplish server-push by keeping the browser connection open. But soon we realized that there were tons of difficulties to accomplish it, and that’s why there were no serious chat services that surpass the chasm. The fact drove us to build a very straightforward chat service of our own.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth?  Do you have a day job?

Lingr: We are a team of 2 full time day members in the Bay Area, and 1 nearly full time member in Vermont.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Lingr: We are three.

Danny Burkes, co-founder and architect, has the technical background at companies like Lotus Development and General Magic. He has unusual range of experience as a software engineer, from device programming to desktop apps to web apps.

Chris Boone, designer, is an independent professional of his own design studio named Hypsometry, and his extraordinary knowledge about tricks around the mixture of Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and CSS gave Lingr a real life.

And I, co-founder and producer, was director of product management at Infoteria, which is our parent company in Japan, and was an engineer at Oracle before that. Also known as one of the senior bloggers at CNET Japan as you’d know, among other publicity or books in Japan.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Lingr: - Simplicity. Our decisions are all driven by how to keep out the complexity, not by how to add features.

- No user preference. We take a user preference as a product of compromise. Pick one out of the best among all possibilities, and go with it.

- Least frustration. Never require any information up front. Require it as we need it. One additional click matters. Principle of least number of concepts.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Lingr: Comet, Ajax, RSS for user experience. Flash is used a bit to play sounds. At backend, Ruby on Rails for the most part, Java and Ant to run Jetty as Comet server, MySQL, Lighttpd, Debian are the part of our setup.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

Lingr: Timezone support. Social features like user profile. Private messaging in a chat room. GMail-like notifier that runs in Windows and Mac.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Lingr: Lingr has spread out to many countries in a few days after launch. The biggest groups being the US and Japan so far.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

Lingr: In the next 6 month, we will simply focus on making it easier for users to get together. In 2 years, that’s a good goal to say that by then we’ll change our lifestyle on the web with Lingr.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Lingr: Making Lingr popular.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Lingr: Providing a way to keep presence of users online without having their browser window open.

Lingr supports persistent connection from browser, but our mistake was the assumption that users would happily keep their browser window open to wait for someone, which turned out not to be true.

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

Lingr: We surely have some ideas in mind, but for now, the most important thing is to create something people want and prove the value.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Lingr: Those figures are not favorable enough to disclose, but we’re experiencing vigorous growth.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Lingr: Through Lingr, we are not just providing a tool, but we are offering a new, fun, social experience.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Lingr: The web is becoming more like the real world, literally.

We have a vision that the web is shifting more and more toward realtime. Like the real world, strolling in the virtual space, there would be live broadcasting blog or live performance of drawing or jam session, and even realtime feedback from audience like applause could be possible in the future- all those are our dreams.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Lingr: Flickr, del.icio.us, Backpack, Hatena. Tons of blogs.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Lingr: Enough to be sharp and fresh, I hope. :-)

Thanks to Kenn Ejima and the Lingr team for this email interview.

You can also read this interview in Japanese at CNET Japan.

Visit Lingr
Originally added to eHub on Aug 21, 06

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan