Since we began the competition, Sun’s Dopplr user base has nearly doubled, and it has pulled ahead of IBM as more engaged Dopplr100 company.
Matt Biddulph, Dopplr CTO, is now nearly ready to put his part of the puzzle into production. That is – people that originally joined the service with accounts other than their corporate email accounts will now be able to merge the two. And by the way- you don’t need to use the corporate account – its just there to check your id.
I actually find it quite interesting, and a rather good story, that a game has led Matt to make a commitment to add a new feature that had previously been on the back-burner. I think you’ll find that dopplr is not using Waterfall methods…
Four guys- total football. Design, develop, grab stuff, tie it together, swap roles, rinse and repeat.
One irony is that some people from Sun have contacted me in the back channel to complain that IBM’s far bigger user base gives it an unfair advantage. Lucky you don’t take such a defeatists approach in the market in general. Its about being the smartest, the most engaged, the most capable, rather than the biggest, isn’t it?
And like I say, we’re not seeing much change at IBM at this point. Sun is looking the likely winner of the inaugural monkchips-initiated dopplr user base challenge. Matt puts it rather more diplomatically than me:
James wants to know which of these two global companies is most open to using new web technology to improve their business travel.
Rich Sharples says:
October 23, 2007 at 4:48 pm
James, IBM is a *much* bigger company than Sun (355,760 vs 34,200 according to Google Finance) – it would only be reasonable to take that into account. Otherwise you’re asserting that coolness and bigness are intrinsically related. Clearly not true.
– Rich
jgovernor says:
October 23, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Rich – wouldn’t you find it fun to beat the behemoth? That is what Sun does doesn’t it? Scraps with the big guys. You’re in the lead. And actually you’re right on – coolness is not a function of bigger size. If you’re cool enough you’re big enough. Ask yourself how many people at IBM write and read blogs versus those at IBM? You guys should be confident…
Gerald Beuchelt says:
October 24, 2007 at 2:33 pm
James –
Just to make sure: do you know if they account for Sun OpenID accounts as well? I am using my personal email, but the SUn OpenID provider – as far as geekiness goes, this should count for some extra points 😉
Gerry
jgovernor says:
October 24, 2007 at 3:09 pm
the number of Sun open-ID registrations is quite small at this point. extra points- I will leave that up to Matt to decide
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