Jubii Goes Alpha
by
on February 25, 2007,
I've been waiting for the beta launch of Jubii with great anticipation. If you are at all like me, you have at least one email account, several IM accounts, your cell phone and/or Blackberry next to you at all times, and feel like you are using up every byte of available RAM keeping all the apps open and trying to sort through the inbox and incoming messages.
Jubii promises to end all this technology jumble. With one seamless interface for email, chat, SMS, VOIP, and file sharing, it allows you to add your contacts to a private area, prioritizing the important incoming information from the rest, who go into a public folder. Their web site promises seamless tie-ins with all your various information-sharing needs, allowing you to choose SMS, IM, email, or chat with one mouse click.
However, the beta launch is disappointing, at best. Jubii has a cool idea; do what Google does with Gmail and GoogleTalk already and add in SMS and VOIP with a splash of Flickr. It should be life-changing. However, the actual launch looks more like an alpha release than a beta release. The only current functionality available is email and chat, and the chat is limited to AIM and ICQ, with no interface available for Yahoo! Messenger or MSN. None of the phone or filesharing functionality is there yet, either, and the site blog isn't even live to give you a hint of when it might be expected.
The Jubii beta launch is a perfect example of why Web 2.0 is so often viewed with skepticism. The tour and the "about" movies look incredible, but the actual meat of the app just isn't there. You expect a beta release to have at least a rudimentary version of the full functionality of the app, which is what's going to win you converts from the very beginning. At this point, Jubii can only run on IE 7 and Firefox, with upcoming support for IE 6, and no work on anything for Safari.
I don't have high hopes for Jubii right now. If you are planning to compete with the big dogs like Google , you need to be ready to get out of the gate fast to start winning converts. This is much too slow a start.
Source: Jubii mailing list
