I'm not denigrating the Olark product, but does the world need another chat service? Of all the problems out there that need to be solved, I personally can't get excited about another site feature as the primary product of a startup. This is something that has been done over and over again through the years.
This example has been beaten to death. Google was at least an order of magnitude better than other search engines, and was the first that actually worked, so it didn't matter how crowded the space was.
When evaluating an opportunity, "___ is a competitive/crowded space", "___ has already won this market", or "does the world need another ___" are all valid objections to raise. The rebuttal should be "but ___ is better/different because of ___" rather than a comparison to Google.
true. i think the parent question is more about adding "goodness" to the world, and less about commercial success.
my personal opinion is that search, which sates the quest for information, is a problem worth solving. chat, at least as the text-based instant message kind of things, creates problems. or rather, it's an opportunity loss.
the fact that i'm talking means i'm not listening. even if this weren't procrastination, even if my main goal in life was to communicate with strangers better, is IM helping me get there? is this the problem olark wants to solve, or do they just want to make yet another IM service?
(ps - i think visually. i communicate best with diagrams. discussions with my husband require a whiteboard or paper scrap. i'd love a communication company whose mission was to prevent misunderstandings. make exchanging perspectives faster, help us get along and respect each other while disagreeing, help us make decisions better.)
