firef.ly

If you look to the sidebar on the right of this page you will see a new widget called firefly. It is a new service that allows anyone who is on the same page to chat with you. The counter will tell you if there are others on the page and if any of them are currently chatting. Once you click on the “Join Them” button, you start to see mouse cursors of other users on the page and if they say something a chat box appears just above where they typed on the page. It is a really fancy, cool little web application. But how useful will it ultimately be? Justin and I were using it just a bit ago for a short chat session and we decided that maybe so, maybe no.

First of all, it can only be used to chat with other people on the page. I believe the intent is that other people reading the same article can discuss it. This makes me think of sort of an active comments section. A pretty cool concept yes, but aren’t passive comments more effective for this purpose. You want to see the conversation about the article come from all the readers as a whole instead of the readers who happen to be there now. So for that purpose, maybe no.

I could also potentially see this service used on a site where you need to talk to an administrator or site operator. For example, if I had a business where I offer computer repair and consultation services, I could allow people who visit my website contact me directly. The problem is that the way firefly currently works is that I would have to be on my website at all times to receive messages. If the host could receive these chats via an IM client for example, this could become much more useful in this situation. Perhaps a premium service would be in order here.

I so far cannot see any opportunities for monetization with a service like this either. Possibly with premium services as mentioned, but at this point it seems more like site bling. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very cool bling, and I encourage you to try it on this site. If you can think of some great uses for this project please discuss in the comments below.

Last 3 posts by Kirk Augustine

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