September 10th, 2008

Jibdee launches: a consumer-centric take on the webtop concept

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:49 am

Categories: Flex, Rich Internet Applications, User Interface

Tags: TechCrunch, User Interface, List, Ryan Stewart

At TechCrunch 50 yesterday a company called Jibidee rolled out a public beta of their service. I like what Jibidee is doing. At its most basic level it’s a webtop product. You can store information, create lists, and generally organize your life through a very engaging web-based interface and a series of templates for things like “Financial”, “School”, and “Shopping Lists”. You can create those lists and then share them with any number of friends to create a collaborative environment that’s perfect for families or co-workers. In a future version of the product they’ll support Address Books and Calendars.

So what makes Jibidee different from all of the other webtops out there? One, I don’t think they’re trying to bite off too much. They’re not trying to replicate everything Windows does. They’re focused on the very specfic niche of the more consumer market. It isn’t trying to compete with things like Google docs or replace an operating system. It’s goal is to essentially make people’s lives a bit simpler by allowing them to store and collaborate with organizers and lists. The other thing that stands out is the user interface, which is an important element for going after the consumer space. They built the application in Flex and really focused on the user interface. It’s fun, colorful, intuitive and best of all, can be customized to look however you want.

I also like the fact that they have a business model coming right out of the gate. They’re using the “freemium” model which gives you a certain number of “sheets” for free and then there are tiers above that. I’m a big fan of the freemium model but it does take some scale to achieve. Jibidee was a semifinalist in the TechCrunch 50.