Anonymous chat app "Banter," by creator of ichat

From	RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Anonymous chat app "Banter," by creator of ichat
Date	2014-03-06 15:01 +0000
Organization	solani.org
Message-ID	<lfa2l5$ikq$1@solani.org> (permalink)

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From the «also good for stalking» department:
Title: Creator of iChat returns to his roots with Banter, an anonymous chat app
Author: Stacey Higginbotham
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 09:00:12 -0500
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/Dfbr5q3iMhA/
Podcast Download URL: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/banter_chat.png?w=143

As the web gets more commercial, more companies want to track and know the
real you. The backlash against this — and the desire to have “ephemeral”
interactions in the digital world — is why Andrew Busey, the creator of iChat
19 years ago[1], has built Banter[2], a chat app with no names and little
storage. The app lets people sign up with any user name and discuss … well,
anything they want.

With Banter, you can follow certain topics, like gaming or SXSW, create
chatrooms and start private conversations. As someone who has spent gobs of
time in IRC and old-school chatrooms it feels like a modern refresh of chat,
designed for a mobile interface. Busey says that he felt like the world is
veering toward the immediacy and conversational nature of chat while valuing
the ability to have a conversation that isn’t archived.

And so, much like the allure of Snapchat is supposedly the fact that photos
disappear, chats in Banter public rooms are only readable for 24 hours and
those from private rooms will be archived for six months. That time may
decrease depending on how people tend to use the app, Busey said.

“I wanted to bring back old-school chat that allowed pseudonyms or alias and
lets you assume a real or fake persona,” Busey said in an interview. “This
type of chat in gaming is popular, and we think it makes sense across a lot
of things.”

[image 4][3]

The app will be available for Android and iOS devices and the plan is to
build a revenue model around in-app purchases that might allow for longer
archives or perhaps the ability to create many private rooms. Busey is
willing to wait to see how people use the app before making big decisions
around revenue, but it’s clear that he’s not keen on advertising.

I compared the app to Meebo, a chat program from the mid-to-late 2000s that
grew as a chat program and then morphed into a content generation/sharing
platform for publishers. It was later purchased by Google for around $100
million[5]. Busey said that he wanted to keep Banter focused more on chat.

The question for Banter, then, is whether now is the time for chat — and
whether or not there is a viable business selling “fancier” versions of chat
to end users. Even iChat turned to the enterprise to find revenue, providing
chat for companies like Sony and Yahoo. But with an app model and easy tech
maybe the time is here for a lean chat startup offering aimed at consumers
weary of being archived and identified.

Banter Chat Inc., the company behind the app was founded this year, and has
raised $833,000 from various angel investors. As the co-founder and CEO,
Busey has returned to chat from years spent starting other companies in the
social and gaming space. He co-founded Pluck, an online content creation site
that sold to Demand Media and a gaming company that sold to Zynga.
[image 6]

[image 8][7]

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial[9].

* Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013[10]
* Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook[11]
* Analyzing the wearable computing market[12]

[image 14][13][image 15]

Links:
[1]: http://adage.com/article/news/imm-digital-media-masters-andrew-busey-ichat/71391/ (link)
[2]: http://banter.me/ (link)
[3]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/banter_chat.png (link)
[4]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/banter_chat.png?w=143&h=300 (image)
[5]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/04/more-on-meebo-price-is-around-100m-product-team-to-work-on-google-publisher-tools-layoffs-hit-sales/ (link)
[6]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=822669&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[7]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=66348 (link)
[8]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=66348 (image)
[9]: http://research.gigaom.com/?utm_source=techutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=822669+creator-of-ichat-returns-to-his-roots-with-banter-an-anonymous-chat-app&utm_content=shigginbotham (link)
[10]: http://pro.gigaom.com/blog/podcast-mobile-winners-and-losers-in-2012-and-what-to-expect-in-2013/?utm_source=techutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=822669+creator-of-ichat-returns-to-his-roots-with-banter-an-anonymous-chat-app&utm_content=shigginbotham (link)
[11]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/10/social-third-quarter-2012-analysis-and-outlook/?utm_source=techutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=822669+creator-of-ichat-returns-to-his-roots-with-banter-an-anonymous-chat-app&utm_content=shigginbotham (link)
[12]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/07/the-wearable-computing-market-a-global-analysis/?utm_source=techutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=822669+creator-of-ichat-returns-to-his-roots-with-banter-an-anonymous-chat-app&utm_content=shigginbotham (link)
[13]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=Dfbr5q3iMhA:XljKzWl9OUM:yIl2AUoC8zA (link)
[14]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (image)
[15]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/Dfbr5q3iMhA (image)

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Anonymous chat app "Banter," by creator of ichat RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-06 15:01 +0000

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