The Business Insider: Dan Frommer

The Next Twitter: Pay Attention To Hot Potato, A New 'Real-Time' Startup

Dan Frommer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:20:00 -0500

The hot story in tech right now is "real-time," thanks to Twitter and Facebook, so you're going to hear a lot of noise over the next few years about "real-time" tech startups. Most of them will be useless and will flame out.

But here's one that we think could actually be pretty cool: It's called Hot Potato, and it launches today. The main idea: It's an iPhone app (and Web site) designed specifically for people to chat about live events.

Specifically:

It is for people to talk about the same concert they're at, the same football game they're watching (in person or on TV), the same bar they're at, or whatever -- as long as it's a live event.
It's NOT for people to share vacation photos with their friends and family, as they do on Facebook.
It's NOT for people to describe their daily habits to complete strangers, as they do on Twitter.
It's NOT for people to share their location info with their friends, as they do on Foursquare or Loopt.

The idea: People want to be able to discuss events with each other that they're all watching or participating in together. That's not something that Twitter does well -- even with hashtags, it's a mess; and it's definitely not something that Facebook status updates, when aggregated, do well.

Enter Hot Potato, which is basically a souped-up, well-designed messaging system, with individual live streams dedicated to single event.

Without going into unnecessary detail, here's how it works:

You download their iPhone app or go to their Web site and sign in with your Facebook credentials. (That's where you're likely to use your real name, and be a real person -- important to Hot Potato.)
You create an event or join one already in progress. Say, for instance, "Michigan vs. Michigan State," or "Pearl Jam concert, Dallas," or "Gossip Girl season finale," or "Friday night at Bar X."
You chat with other people watching or participating in the event. Celebrate or trash talk athletes. Make fun of bad haircuts. Laugh or crack jokes. Add your two cents. Or just read what others are saying. Whatever.
You can snap photos with your iPhone and include them in the stream.
You will get updates from people who you're Facebook friends with -- presumably, you'd want to see what they're saying -- and other popular updates from strangers at the event.

There's a fairly complex algorithm that goes into deciding which updates you'll see, and we won't explain it here.

But the basic idea is that you won't get overwhelmed with updates, the way you might in a chat room with dozens or hundreds of participants. And the updates you see will be ones that are meaningful to you, either because your real-world friends said them, or because other people from the event thought they were interesting.

This is something that's more easily experienced than explained, so be sure to check out the Hot Potato Web site or iPhone app -- coming soon.

Hot Potato is based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC, and was founded by Justin Shaffer, a former MLB.com exec. Early investors include RRE Ventures and First Round Capital.

Why do we like the company?

It solves a real problem. We spent hours in MLB.com meetings earlier this year while they were trying to figure out a way for fans to chat during games. Hot Potato is the perfect solution for something like that
It makes total sense for social circles (like ours) that are iPhone-dominated.
The app, which we saw yesterday, is elegant, well-designed, and simple enough for normal people to use it.
It appeals to over-sharers, voyeurs, AND normal people.
There's a zillion ways to make money, such as selling ads, licensing the technology to companies like MLB.com for custom products, selling transcripts to the company whose event is being discussed, etc.

It's possible that Facebook could develop something similar and knock Hot Potato out of the game. But for now, we think this one has real promise.

The Business Insider: Dan Frommer

The Next Twitter: Pay Attention To Hot Potato, A New 'Real-Time' Startup

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