Online wordprocessor updated, but does it have a chance at survival?

I don’t think longevity is the biggest issue… the biggest issue is feature differentiation. If there’s two choices, and they both do the same thing, folks are going to go with the Yahoo/MS/Google version because they know those companies. If the smaller company’s version has some great features not yet adopted by the big boys… that’s where the startups have a chance to shine.

Aaron, I’m not even sure about that. After all, I’m already a Gmail user, I’m playing with Calendar and soon will get locked into that, so I’ll probably stick with Google’s word processor even if it has a few less features than others.

It’s why Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass over the other competitors.

Good point… another issue is word of mouth and advertising. Portal/destination sites such as Google/Yahoo/MSN can easily advertise their new service to existing users of other services… whereas an “unknown” site has to try to break into the market as a newbie. Before your post today I’d never even heard of Zoho.

People won’t use what they don’t know exists.

Hmm I think that is true of all small companies everywhere, in every market.

Hope you are a strong swimmer.

I think, eventually, the online collaboration space will shake out w/the big players (google, yahoo, microsoft, whomever) having the dominant online word processors … but enormous profits available to smaller competitors who differentiate with niche offerings.

An online word processor is a utility. An online word processor, for example, w/a customized, paid-subscription plan for specific industries, pre-populated with marketing communications pieces and other industry-specific text … goes beyond a utility and to a “done for us” system … and can command an enormous premium for use.

Beyond the initial “get bought out” model, niche models are always available with high-profits with small numbers to those who are willing to shift paradigms.

If I am a normal user, not a geek, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft (as brands) are not nearly as important as you imply.

I blogged about this previously Robert. One of the problems I see with Zoho Writer is its inability to work properly (or consistently) on the mac platform.

I worked with the developers from Zoho to try to test this for them but they couldn’t get it to work.

Writely works perfectly on my Mac.

Case closed.

You wouldn’t have to worry about it sticking around if it (a) can sync your data to your local hard drive, and (b) stores its data in an open or widely-used format. That way you could easily switch to another provider if needed. Sadly, few Web 2.0 apps seem to understand that.

I agree with Micahel Cage – we believe there are many opportunities to specialize and differentiate for us at Zoho. Second, this market is still young, and there is plenty of evolution ahead. A smaller player, by definition, needs only a smaller bite of the market to be successful.

Tom, we apologize for the trouble with Safari on Mac. Zoho works on Firefox on Mac. We are still having trouble with Safari, but we will support it in future. The rapid pace of evolution is making it hard to test on Safari, in addition to IE and Firefox.

Sridhar Vembu
http://zoho.com

… And forgot to mention that Zoho is a division of AdventNet, a profitable software company in business for 10 years, navigating the tech bubble, without ever needing outside capital. Let’s just say we know a thing or two about survival

Robert,

you’re right if all online wordprocessors remain effectively the same plus or minus a few features. A small entrant has to recast this market. For example, journalists need less formatting features and just want to write. But mashup those features with apporpriate research features and other market specific features might make a product very attractive to jourmalists. Now expand this to other markers which have need of wordprocessing, but really need/desire a features or a user experience that’s outside of what a mainstream product will do.

Yes i agree with ” j.marlowe “

“After all, I’m already a Gmail user”

And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else? You didn’t become a gmail user because you had already been using it, you weren’t “locked” in. They created a service with differentiating features.

Microsoft and Google swam upstream once upon a time too.

I agree with Tom above though – you need to it to work on all platforms (Writely), but you also need it to re-think the paradigm of a word processor. MS Word just has too much feature bloat. I’ll be happy when the new version has less features, not more but marketeers can’t get their head around that (unlike 37 Signals, who can).

So Robert, if you have to be a big fish to swim in today’s technology pond, what were you thinking when you left MS for a start-up?

I don’t buy the big fish theory. If a new product’s functionality and cost ratio makes it a better value, I’m not only using it, but I’m telling all my non-geek and half-geek friends and colleagues about it.

That’s why I traded-in IE for Firefox, Win2K for Linux, FrontPage for Cute HTML, etc. The viral impact of early adopters, espeically with the help of blogs and social networks, drive a product’s acceptance faster than the size of its parent. In fact I tend to steer clear of new software from large companies because I know it’s half-baked when its released.

“If I am a normal user”

Normal users don’t read scoble.

Anyway, 80 percent of what I need in a word processor can, in fact, be done in this little text box above the “Submit Comment”. Add the local persistence features of Notepad, and you’re up to 95 percent of what I need. Add Text centering, margins, and page numbers, and that’s about it.

My company pays, what?, 300 dollars per Office installation. Wait, I’ll check…

Okay, I blew 5 minutes and couldn’t figure out what “suite” I’ve got. It’s the big one. It’s got Access (snort) and Visio. The only one I ever use is Outlook and I hate it.

There are certain advantages to everybody using Windows–it helps ensure wide availability of software. In the old days, you’d go to a software store and they’d have 10 different sections. Amiga, C64, Apple II, PC, Atari, etc. There really wasn’t any advantage to that.

But Office? Bleh. It’s a goner.

But forget web versions of office. What you’ll really have happen is–little companies saving money by using Open office (or whatever) and then growing into big companies.

Scoble, you’re not a geek. I’m a geek, so don’t lump yourself in with me. You don’t rip apart old computers and install FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) to make a NAS, and you don’t have an OpenBSD SSH/Proxy server running in your house, and you couldn’t live without a GUI. You don’t attend LUGs (Linux User Groups), and you don’t write software and/or scripts. You don’t know how to install a LAMP system, and I could go on and on and on.

I mean, you’ve worked at Microsoft talking to people about Microsoft products. That does NOT make you a geek.

Scoble, you’re not a geek. I’m a geek, so don’t lump yourself in with me. You don’t rip apart old computers and install FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) to make a NAS, and you don’t have an OpenBSD SSH/Proxy server running in your house, and you couldn’t live without a GUI. You don’t attend LUGs (Linux User Groups), and you don’t write software and/or scripts. You don’t know how to install a LAMP system, and I could go on and on and on.

I mean, you’ve worked at Microsoft talking to people about Microsoft products. That does NOT make you a geek.

>And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else?

I still do. It’s called Hotmail. From Microsoft. Lots of smaller companies tried to do free email too. Which is sort of why I came to this place.

Not sure about word processors – I don’t quite get that – I can always find a text processor on the machine I have.

OTOH, DabbleDB is the bomb – like MS Access only better. This is the killer desktop to web app for me.

I think Roberts point is dead on. If it somes down to functionality vs reliability for document storage then reliability on storage will generally win.

An interesting one though is WordPress. Somehow over the last few months they have gone to dead reliable in my mind, and I am less concerned about doing my own personal backup. My confidence may be misplaced, but thats how I feel. So can Zoho develop that confidence level – if so, they have a winner.

I keep thinking about Roberts key point – how the small things get missed, such as the importance of search, back 7 years ago. This could be one of those situations.

>But, in the word processor business? That’s a lot harder.

If the little guys (or the big guys, for that matter) think they are in the word processor business, they’ll be crushed. Google is in the attention business at the moment … and there is a logical place for a word processor to play a role there. There are many *other* business models that can also use an online, collaborative word processor to drive the outcomes of their markets.

Todd, have you looked at Zoho Creator http://zohocreator.com which provides an online application creation tool? We are marrying database and scripting on that one.

Sridhar Vembu

As long as a word processor supports ODF it should not matter that the software was not built by a large company. As long as my data is in a portabe non-proprietary standard format, the big companies won’t be able to lock me in to using their tool.

Just checked it out and they offer broad document import and export facilities (including OpenDocument), so they get a nod from me – they give me the freedom to leave, so I may well have the confidence to stay. These days that’s the precondition, ahead of features (assuming basic feature hygiene).