Technically Speaking

Last year I discovered radiusIM while out surfing to find a place to put all my IM/chat needs in one spot. I personally do not like to install IM programs, but being the Social Media person that I am, I needed to have one. RadiusIM was the first I ran across.

Since I had just started the blog, I reached out and contacted John Londono and asked for an interview. I had asked for my traditional 5 question interview (which then was 20 questions to give you perspective on how long ago I asked). At the time they were very very new, and John wanted more time to work the product.

Today, we learn a little more about radiusIM from John as well as his partner Zohar Yardeni.

Q1: When you created RadiusIM, did you feel that your service would gain traction over other services that do literally the same thing? I know you have the mapping in there as a twist, but do you feel it is enough to really move past your competition?

John: radiusIM is creating ‘Social IM’ on the web with a focus on location. Classic web IM has gained a ton of traction and that’s very exciting, but we are going after those IMers who are looking for something fun and different and not just getting past a firewall.

Zohar: Knowing where your friends are and who else is around is something fundamental to the social user experience and the combination with IM is very powerful. The question is whether our feature set in its current and future form can successfully capitalize on the location opportunity, and we think the answer is yes.

Q2: What are the distinctions you have over the other browser based IM services?

Zohar: radiusIM differentiates itself through its location functionality. It lets you see where your friends are and surf for people based on location. If you simply want MSN or AIM on the web, there are probably better places for that. IM is evolving, though, because people want something more social and fun.

John: radiusIM has taken a big step in that direction by adding features like location and creating an open network. Ultimately our biggest distinction will emerge as location becomes further integrated into the online experience.

Q3: Where do you feel browser based IM will take all of us? Do you feel that as there are more and more IM clients, that more people will just use browser based over downloading an application?

Zohar: Ask a handful of teens how many applications they download and install versus how many websites they visit in a given month and you’ll get your answer. The migration to web based applications in all forms is really inevitable. This trend will only gain in momentum as the adoption of broadband further accelerates and the operating systems move to more of a networked model.

John: IM in particular is tailor made for this migration as connectivity is a prerequisite and over time the web apps should have no problem providing all the same functionality as their desktop counterparts.

Q4: What are the plans at implementing other IM services not already in RadiusIM? Are there issues that you run into such as proprietary coding, etc.?

John: The networks we currently support (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber) account for a substantial chunk of the global IM traffic. Today, our mission is to stay on track and give our users what they want which is more social and location based features to enhance their experience.

Zohar: Soon, we’ll roll out a widget that will let users display where they are what they’re up to on any web page. These are precisely the types of things we want to dedicate our resources to - creating a new social platform based on location.

Q5: This is your time to address the users and readers. Anything else you would like to tell everyone?

Zohar: The main thing we want to pass along to the users is a big thank you. It’s been a great ride since we went live and the users have been a big part of that.

John: So, thanks a ton for all the feedback and keep telling your friends about radius.

Technically Speaking, I want to thank radiusIM - John and Zohar - for taking the time to answer my 5 questions. With the amount of contacts that John receives I’m sure daily, I’m happy that he remembered that I had asked for an interview a long time ago in blogosphere time!