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Nurphy tries to take on email, instant messaging AND social networks
Nurphy is a new service that is aiming to move conversations out of email and instant messaging, and instead host them on their service. The site claims that having conversations using these well-entrenched and mostly open services is unwieldy and awkward enough to justify jumping to a new, proprietary service where the only interface available is a web page, with a mobile version of the page available.
Despite the service being extremely well executed, I just don't buy the claims Nurphy makes in its flawlessly produced introduction video. I hold countless conversations via email and instant messaging daily, and never feel like the medium is failing me; it's more a matter of choosing the medium that makes the most sense for the kind of conversation you're having. I suppose there are certain collaboration scenarios where I could see how using something like Google Wave would work better than email, but even then it's only really an option when everyone you want to work with is familiar enough with it to switch contexts from email. Nurphy faces the same issue, and without Google's weight behind them.
Along with taking aim at email and IM, Nurphy is also trying to compete with the social network juggernauts Twitter and Facebook. While I wish the folks behind Nurphy well, and they are obviously extremely talented given the fit and polish that is plain to see on the site, all I can say is, "Good luck, you're going to need it."
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsKeith MoonJan 11th 2010 4:52PM
"even then it's only really an option when everyone you want to work with is familiar enough with it to switch contexts from email"
One of the features of Nurphy is that people you are having a conversation with can continue to use email, just by hitting reply. So you don't have the problem of all your friends having to be on Google Wave, it bridges the gap between email and a more structured way to have a conversation.
Just my 2 pence worth.
ScootahJan 11th 2010 6:40PM
Fundamentally, It'll take a lot to shift me from Digsby. A digsby style client that synchronizes with Google Reader (ala Feed Demon but using Firefox with extensions enabled as the primary browser) with support for Skype, Google Voice and the other primary voice chat solutions (even if they only talk to the IM interfaces) and Google Wave would go a long way towards moving me.
If they then bolted on some blog management solution that talked to Blogger/Type Pad/Wordpress and expanded their supported networks a bit and, integrated a songbird meets VLC merger project from the same interface and took Thunderbird's IMAP capabilities so that I could maintain local copies of all my imap solutions, bolted on capability to talk to google calendars and added an MAPI interface so I could watch my work email from the same solution? Hell, I might even pay for that sucker.