Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Protopage, originally added to eHub on Sep 17, 05.

eHub Interviews Protopage

Thanks to Andre of Protopage for this email interview on October 2, 2005.

This interview is available in Japanese thanks to Ryutaro Kamitsu.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Protopage: Protopage is a personal springboard - everything you need quick access to on the web, all on one page.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Protopage: AJAX created the opportunity to deliver an extraordinary user experience.

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

Protopage: 100 hours per week per person. This is a mission.

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

Protopage: High volume web site engineering, design and marketing talent spanning London, New York and Santa Clara. Team size not disclosed.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Protopage: User experience is our no.1, no.2 and no.3 design objective.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Protopage: On the front end, every last AJAX detail is hand coded for maximum browser compatibility and performance optimization. Bespoke clustering technology based on 64-bit Java in the datacentre gives us massive back-end scalability.

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

Protopage: Our no. 1 requested feature is RSS feeds. Protopage 2.0 will soon be released with feeds, and much more.

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

Protopage: Our greatest surprise was to discover that we’re very popular in Japan. Our main territories are the US, Canada, the UK and Western Europe.

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

Protopage: We’re relentlessly developing new functionality, and we’ve already mapped out a feature set through to version 5.0. If it can be done, we’re doing it. Feature prioritization is driven by user feedback.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Protopage: Time. Some companies ‘chase the sun’ by outsourcing. We have a simpler solution - don’t sleep.

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

Protopage: Time. Version 2.0 is imminent.

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

Protopage: Success in software requires scale. We grow or we die.

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

Protopage: Not disclosed.

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

Protopage: The community. We’re thrilled about the feedback and the time that people have taken to engage us in email focus groups to help us drive the project forward. You ask, we make it happen.

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

Protopage: Web ‘pages’ are becoming web ‘applications’. From a web application, we demand interaction and responsiveness. AJAX makes that possible.

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

Protopage: We don’t have time to sleep, we don’t have time to eat. You think we have time to surf the web?!

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

Protopage: Sleep is an act of gross misconduct.

Thanks to Andre of Protopage for this email interview on October 2, 2005.

This interview is available in Japanese thanks to Ryutaro Kamitsu.

Visit Protopage
Originally added to eHub on Sep 17, 05

» 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

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