TikiJon.com

For any small business, there’s no question that efficient internal communication is key. That’s doubly true in today’s world, where many companies have team members scattered around the world. There are communication platforms out there that look to tackle this, but many of them are either time consuming to setup or aren’t really designed for your ‘everyman’ small business or organization. Enter HipChat, a startup that wants to be the communication platform that any business or organization can get up and running in a matter of minutes. The service launches today in private beta, and the first 100 people to enter “TECHCRUNCH” as their invite code will be able to start their own company networks (you only need one code to invite your entire company).

HipChat offers an Adobe AIR client (compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux) that lets you chat with your entire team at once, or hold more private discussions with select team members. It offers support for quick attachment sharing, notifications when you receive a message, and a searchable web archive for past messages. And perhaps most important: it’s very easy to get up and running, even for the most casual users. You don’t need your own company Email address, and the signup process takes all of three minutes.

The app itself is slick. It runs in AIR (which I’m not typically a fan of) but it looks very clean and doesn’t come with that distinctly unnative you often wind up with on AIR. Chats are broken into different rooms — along with your companywide chat, you can invite other team members to join you in smaller groups, and you can mark them private if you’d like to restrict access.

Now, businesses often have the same question about services like this: why not just use a group chat room on AIM or Skype? The answer is equally obvious. If that’s so practical, why aren’t you already doing it?

It’s hard to overstate how much these services can help. At TechCrunch we rely heavily on TC50 winner Yammer for much of our internal communication. It’s amazing how reliant we’ve become on the service in such a short time — if Yammer goes down, we wind up turning to mass Email messages, which are hardly ideal.

HipChat will be facing off with Yammer and, to some degree, Salesforce Chatter, but it’s tackling a different market. Yammer appeals to a huge variety of companies, but it requires that they have their own internal Email address (e.g. john@company.com). For small companies with limited tech resources, that’s a fairly high barrier to entry, which gives HipChat an opportunity. There’s also the potential to appeal to organizations like fraternities and clubs. HipChat also competes with Campfire by 37signals but Campfire is web-based rather than a desktop app.

HipChat does have a ways to go from a functionality perspective before it can really match Yammer’s offerings. For one, there’s currently no way to receive a SMS notification when someone mentions you in a message. There are also no mobile applications currently available. HipChat also lacks some of the security options offered by Yammer, like restricting access to specified IP ranges, but for most small businesses that probably isn’t much of an issue. The HipChat team says that they’ll consider any good ideas its users request, so don’t be surprised if we see some of these features roll out soon.

Users will be able to try the service free for thirty days, and then can step up to a paid plan, which range from $9 a month for 12 members and a restricted chat history to $100 a month for 100 members and unlimited chat history. More pricing details are here.

HipChat was founded by Garret Heaton, Pete Curley, Chris Rivers, who previously founded calendar startup HipCal, which was acquired by Plaxo in 2006. At Plaxo they helped build out Plaxo Pulse. They stayed at the company through its acquisition by Comcast in 2008, and left earlier this year to start HipChat.

You can get a feel for HipChat in the demo video below. Clearly the HipChat team had a good time making it — make sure to pay attention to the The Office inspired chats (this is especially funny because Salesforce used the exact same idea for their demo).

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Google Wave arrives on September 30th. On that day, Google will start sending out 100,000 invites to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

It’s not even released and it’s generating more hype than almost any other web product in recent memory. The reason stems from its game-changing features and their potential applications on business, education, customer service, email, social networking, and more.

So with Wave on the way, we wanted to explore some of the potential of Google’s upcoming product. We have a few of our own ideas and included some from Google Wave developers, but more than anything, we want your ideas, so be sure to leave your great Google Wave invention in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll feature them in the future!

1. Wave-Powered Forums

This idea’s actually been in my head before, but it’s articulated with some depth by Andrew Camel in the Google Wave API Google Group:

“So I thought that it would be an awesome feature of google wave to have it power a forum. Each thread, instead of being multiple different posts, it would just be a google wave. So, instead of having to try a discussion by posting and going back to the page and checking for new replies and while you were posting, you missed a new part of the discussion, you can post like you are having an instant-message session and you can also save the posts like forum threads. I really think that this would be a great use of the google wave api.”

Real-time threads? Saving waves like forum threads? Google Wave?! Sign us up!

2. Wave-powered Commenting System

We actually alluded to this possibility in our Google Wave Guide when we discussed Wave Embeds:

“One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.”

Now that we’ve had some time to play with Wave, we think more than ever that Wave as a commenting system is a real possibility. Each blog post or YouTube video could have a new wave, where users could converse about practically anything in real-time. Anybody who comes in late can just play back the wave and get up to speed. It could be a whole new era for commenting.

3. Wave-Based Content Management System

A thread in the API group discusses the possibility of using Wave as a project management system. I’ll be honest – even I’ve been toying with this idea. Here’s what Jason Salas said in the thread:

I think that maybe many of the major CMS vendors will create extensions (if we don’t do it ourselves) to integrate their products with Wave. That’s what I’m working on now. But that is a neat idea to actually use Wave as its own CMS platform, with assumed features
like document creation/management, scheduling, RSS feeds, (micro) blogging, archival/search, etc.”

Can’t you see it?

4. Wave for Customer Support

This idea actually comes from a thread in the Google Wave development preview titled “What Will You Use it For?” It’s a remarkable discussion and brainstorming session over the potential of wave. One of the most fleshed-out ideas in the thread, though, is Wave for customer support. Here are some of the bullet-points for how Wave could be used in customer support:

- Sending trouble tickets
- Incident tracking can be a wave
- Call center analytics gadget
- Distribution list gadget
- Customer meta-data gadget
- Surveys can be a wave

Real-time customer support? Yeah, someone please build that.

5. Wave for Education

We reported a few days ago that Google is giving some schools and businesses an early look at Google Wave. But why? What could Wave possibly accomplish in the realm of education and business? A lot, we firmly believe.

I refer once again to the “What Will You Use it For?” Wave in the dev preview for some ideas for how Wave can be used in education.

- Building a more interactive / creative learning environment
- Proofreading / writing papers
-Brainstorming potential project ideas
- Interactive tutoring from home
- Collaborative Environment for Cyber Schooling

With more widgets, you could embed streams and communicate with professors in real-time. We’re excited about Wave’s potential to transform education.

What Are Your Ideas?

We’ve highlighted some of our ideas and many ideas from enthusiasts across the web. So now it’s your turn. What is your idea for Google Wave? We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions in the comments.

Oh, and if you need a little inspiration for your idea, be sure to check out our comprehensive Google Wave coverage:

- Google Wave: A Complete Guide

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

- Twave: Google Wave + Twitter

Tags: Google, Google Wave, Google Wave extension, Google Wave Gadget, Google Wave Robot, Lists