Iterasi: Out of Private Beta and Open for Business

We first covered Iterasi back in January, when they launched at DEMO, and were disappointed that our signals crossed when they launched their public beta earlier this month. Alex Williams, Director of Product Marketing for Iterasi, was kind enough to talk to me about where they are and where they are heading after the launch to fill me in on what's been happening over the past few months:

Cyndy: How much of the functionality promised in the demo has been rolled with this public beta?

Alex: Iterasi now has the ability to save web pages as well as share them. You can share pages via email, or use the embed code and place on blogs or any other web page.

People are using it similar to the way they use bookmark services: tagging, placing in folders, etc., but it's becoming more important to be able to save the dynamic content, not just a bookmark. It's a much more sophisticated management system. Bloggers have a permanent record that they can embed in their pages.

What has your feedback been like since the DEMO launch?

Users really like the ability to save [all the information in] the pages, without having to save all files to their hard drives. They've been looking for a service like this to save a page at exactly one point in time, which adds another dimension to the web experience. Capturing these different points in time is part of a lifestream.

I'm a Mac user, so my biggest question is when is your Mac version coming?

It will probably be early in Q3, but certainly some time this summer.

How do you think Iterasi can be expanded?

We are looking at how to integrate more dynamic features, like RSS, which would enable people to start using RSS in more ways. For example, letting people subscribe to the pages that you are saving.

What do you feel is the primary advantage over screencaps?

With Iterasi, you have the same visual representation you'd get with a screenshot, but also the click-thru capabilities. You can see how it looks, but also play with it, interact with the links, etc.

And now the question asked of all Web 2.0 companies; what are your plans for monetization?

We are so early in the game but we do believe that we are providing a service that people need and will find relevant to their lives. More than ever before, the documents we at one time saved in our file cabinets or our hard drives are now online, kept as web pages. People need ways to save the web pages relevant to them. It is the potential of providing a relevant web experience that will lead us to new opportunities that could cover the consumer or enterprise markets.

Alex also wanted to make sure that our readers know that Scheduler (the capability to set Iterasi to save versions of a dynamic web page over time, like tracking Techmeme) will be out in the next 30-45 days, somewhere in the vicinity of the Mac version.

An embeddable version of Profy from Iterasi: