37signals Debriefs The Fanbase

37signals, the team renowned for giving Ruby and her Rails a great rep, has had its five-some of web apps out for a while (in Internet years) now, so you can forgive us if we’re very curious to see what’s next on the firm’s agenda. Fortunately, they had an answer for anyone reading the company blog on Monday.

Posted on the Signal vs. Noise blog on the 12th, a tip by Jason Fried as to the happenings at home base was juicy without giving it all away. They’re saving the rest to dish out in increments to ensure that the thousands of readers of SVN aren’t without some measure of suspense. We like that.

The tip was about a product called Highrise, and essentially, it’s a digital rolodex. But it’s more like a cross between LinkedIn, Mac OS X’s Address Book, and a bunch of other services, which if mentioned, might confuse. Here’s what you need to know:

For one, your contact manager, Highrise, is shared. With lots of people, with few, or with no one. You choose. The choosing is a given, sure, but we thought we’d let you know anyway. The important thing is that Highrise is supposed to let you collaborate in ways that your old and gray CRM (customer relationship management) tool would not allow you to do. By the way, we embellished a bit with the “gray”, but we’re sure you caught that.

Jason said it best. “Keeping track of who said what, when they said it, and what needs to be done next is complicated. A jumble of notes on paper, in email drafts folders, and post-it notes is a surefire way to miss this and forget that. Further, we wanted to build a shared tool so I could read up on conversations David had with John Doe before I called John Doe. Knowing the history of a company’s past interaction with people is a great way to save time and make future conversations more valuable.”

Oh yeah, that’s definitely a lengthy quote, but the copy-paste action was needed. Who better to let you in on the motive behind Highrise than one of its creators?

Highrise will certainly work with some or all of 37signals’ applications. The firm will most likely take a “progressive integration” approach. Unless, of course, it happens upon a stream of genius which lets them fill all gaps at once. That would be great.

Each existing invention helps another out in certain ways already. Building Highrise as a sort of extension that is also capable of acting on its own is only natural to help achieve the never-ending mission the firm is on.

What’s the mission? To create simple software tools that help you, not frustrate you. You can bet on Highrise adding to Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. After all, what good would it do you to maintain a nifty, shared, customizable contact list without adding the benefit of being able to work with colleagues and outside forces on projects all at the same time?

Check back here on Profy for more tips on Highrise in the future.