Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Writely, originally added to eHub on Sep 11, 05.

eHub Interviews Writely

Thanks to Sam Shillace of Writely 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?

Writely: Writely is a web-based, collaborative word processor. It allows you to edit documents online with whomever you choose, and then publish and/or blog them online. You can edit them together at the same time, or separately.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Writely: We were working on something called NoteKeeper, a peer-to-peer desktop note/file-sharing app, but just weren’t in love with the project. One day, Sam said, why not run it on the web? It’ll be Flickr for documents! Which, of course, it didn’t end up as, but that’s how it started.

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

Writely: 24/7. This is our day job.

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

Writely: There are 3 of us, all senior software engineers with long track records in successful, mass-market, consumer software. We have lots of help from fans (Hi Kevin at impossible.com! Hi Kourge!), and we have a few folks working with as consultants who we consider part of the team.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Writely: Keep it simple and iterate constantly. Don’t put it in unless someone asks for it. Go as fast as you can, answer every user question you get asked. Users, users, users!

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Writely: We use C# and ASP.net on the server and Javascript and HTML on the client. We have our own Ajax framework. We have our own database layer.

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

Writely: At the moment, it’s supporting OpenOffice native document format. Followed closely by support for the Macintosh Safari browser. After that, it’s a lot of word-processor stuff like word count, page breaks, etc. And spreadsheets aren’t far behind.

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

Writely: Our users are about as global as they can get. There is *always* someone using Writely. About 5/6 of the blogs about us on technorati are in non-english languages.

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

Writely: For the next 6 months, we run like hell! Continued rapid iterations based on customer feedback and more features. Over the next 2 years, we hope to grow the user base as much as possible, become the blog-posting tool of choice and be the fastest, easiest and most widely-adopted way to make a wiki, create a document, collaborate, or post a web page. We think we’ll replace a lot of the common tasks people use Word processors for, and, eventually, editing documents on the web will seem as natural as doing your email does now.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Writely: The need for sleep.

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

Writely: Time.

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

Writely: Our model is simple, and positive—it’s based on the carrot, not the stick. As we come out of our (free) beta, some of the new features we have added will become subscription-only, with the plan that power users and corporate customers can fund the public use. We also intend to sell corporate licenses, continue to beef up our subscription-only offerings and possibly create variant sites for different target audiences.

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

Writely: Our user base has grown +200% every 6 days since our beta launch on August 29, 2005, so it would be hard to come up with an average day!

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

Writely: How much people love it! It’s one thing to make something you like for yourself, but it’s a whole different feeling to hear from so many people, all over the world, how Writely has changed their lives.

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

Writely: We think a major shift in applications is happening right now. It will probably take a few years to be fully realized, but the world will look very different when it does. We don’t think the new apps will be copies of the desktop apps, but we think applications will become smaller, more connected, more customized, and more about what our friend Peter Rip calls “Net Work”.

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

Writely: Google, BoingBoing, Digg, Pandora (wow...wish we’d written that), technorati, and, sigh, msdn.

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

Writely: Steve usually gets 5-6, Claudia close to 7, and Sam gets 6 if his daughter doesn’t wake him up!

Thanks to Sam Shillace of Writely for this email interview on October 2, 2005.

(This interview is available in Japanese thanks to Ryutaro Kamitsu.)

Visit Writely
Originally added to eHub on Sep 11, 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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