Interview with Rob O'Leary of Post282
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Post282 is a free, web-based service designed to allow users to create and run their own private community websites. If you have a group of friends, and want to post messages, share videos and photos, chat and socialize, then Post282 is for you.
Rob is an Irish software engineer/entrepreneur with a genuine passion for designing and delivering real-world enterprise systems. Rob has been writing software for over 14 years, including spending time in e-learning software, travel software, e-business systems, social software, and writing more websites, widgets, and gadgets than he can even remember! |
Do you think that there is a shift taking place in the web community where people are looking for more private, intimate communities where they can share their ideas / pictures / events with more like minded, physically connected people?
Yes. And also no.
Which is to say: I think people certainly are looking for more intimate community sites, but I think that growth in demand is happening in parallel to the demand for open systems, rather than superseding it.
Before there was MySpace and Bebo, there were bulletin board systems that supported web communities – some public and some private. However, with the growth in web technologies over the past few years, people now expect more from these type of systems. So where there was once public chat forums and IRC channels, now there are the social networks. Where private boards and channels existed, users now want systems like Post282 that allow them to share and communicate with text, images, video, audio, direct chat etc.
While the web was once the domain of a relatively small number of computer-savvy individuals, these days it’s everywhere – and almost everyone is a part of it in one way or another. This being the case – there are lots of people online who want to stake out a piece of virtual real-estate, and say “This is us, this is our little corner of the web!”
While teen-targeted friend-makers and dating sites and business networking sites all have their appeal – as do public blogging systems – there will always be groups of friends who want to leverage the advantages of socializing online, while keeping the elements of security and confidentially that a private group of friends provides. Post282 communities are like little bubble-universes inside which users feel free to say what they like, and really be themselves!
How do you differentiate Post282 from other private community based products like Ning or WetPaint?
Technology-wise we’re growing in the same space as Ning and WetPaint – and with our upcoming release – three weeks from now – we’ll be right there or better in terms of user-customization and integration of third party code.. You can find a few screen-shots of the new version at http://www.post282.com/screenshots/v2/p282_2_1.png, http://www.post282.com/screenshots/v2/p282_2_2.png, and http://www.post282.com/screenshots/v2/p282_2_3.png. We believe the usability and intuitiveness of the Post282 interface marks it out as the choice for less tech-savvy users, which are the exact people we’re trying to represent.. Or rather, the people we’re trying to give the ability to represent themselves on the web.
The guys at Ning and WetPaint are certainly building great systems, but their targets are closer to those of the large scale social networks (MySpace, etc).. Even the terminology is different – Ning offer users the ability to create their own ‘Social Networks’, and WetPaint ,’Click-and-type wikis’… We’re about communities – not networks, not wikis – Communities… We don’t put users photos on the website, we don’t host public sites, and we don’t have 1000- or 1500-member communities… Our groups are smaller, less interested in the technology, and more interested in just getting on with socializing with their existing friends. On Post282 the power is in the hands of the users – we just ensure that the communities are locked up tight, and everything ticks over as it should.
In a business sense, the development of the free, hosted Post282 is not a primary aspect of our revenue model. This – as far as I know – is a marked difference from organizations like Ning and WetPaint. We’ve recently partnered with a Dublin-based development house with the aim of
delivering customized, targeted versions of the system into businesses, societies, and clubs. So for example – we might produce a version targeted at Golf or Tennis clubs, that will have all of the usual features, along with league tables, event co-ordination tools and so on, all with a fully-customized, branded interface. These targeted community – or ‘club’ – implementations (maybe we should call it clubbr!) can be delivered either as a hosted pay-as-you-go service, or
installed locally as part of a licensing agreement.
You have built the product primarily on open source components, what are some of the advantages in using open source?
In fact, the Post282 platform itself is largely a home-grown, pure J2EE system. In the spirit of happy sharing goodness, we did post an early version of the code online – but all of the core components of the system were hand-rolled. Having said that, I code for several open-source projects, and we use OS tools throughout the non-core parts of the Post282 platform.
The open source movement and the availability of freely distributed, high-quality code is a huge benefit for start-up operations like ourselves. While certain unnamed large corporations will charge license-fees for everything – the operating system, your workbench, your application server, your database, support – even documentation in some cases – open-source products are universally free and customizable. This means an engineer can actually put together a system and get it online with only a very low setup cost – in some cases, just a domain registration and basic hosting deal!
On top of this, open-source software removes the need for engineers to re-invent the wheel every time we’re building a system… So if you want to go out and write the next world-shaking web-app, you can really focus on that part of the system that’s new and made by You. If your
app. happens to need to contain a client-side calendar, you no longer need to spend a week noodling around with leap-years and mumbling “30 days has September…” to yourself – You can just grab an open-source calendar online, bolt it in, and get back to the part of the system
you’re really interesting in – and the part that’s really going to make the difference to your users.
What have been some of the challenges in building Post282 while holding down a “day job”?
Building Post282 is fun and interesting for me.. But it’s not without its challenges. In my day job (my mild-mannered alter-ego : ) I’m director of tech and chief architect at panthius.com – so I spend an absolute minimum of 40 hours each week designing and implementing Panthius systems, co-ordinating the activities of engineers, and generally assembling and delivering software in a very high-pressure environment.
One challenge, then, with building Post282 in parallel with Panthius is just the amount of time spent working in a given week. It’s quite easy for me to find myself coding from early in the morning to one or two AM the following morning for days – even weeks – on end. So while I enjoy this kind of thing immensely, it’s really important to force yourself to take some time off to relax and take it easy from time to time.
It’s certainly not easy trying to get a project like this off the ground while simultaneously keeping everything else going… But as we’ve always said at Panthius: If it was easy, everyone would be doing it!
BONUS: Of all the patents you hold, what is the one you are most proud of?When not working at your “day job” or Post282, what is your favorite thing to do in Dublin?
Hehe… when I’m not on fortnight-long coding sprees you mean? : ) Well, these days Dublin is full of people from all over the world, and the cafes and pubs are second to none – so it’s a great place to meet people and socialize… Unsurprisingly, I suppose, my favourite thing to do in Dublin is socialize with the guys I socialize with online in our Post282 community!
Copyright © 2007 by Will Kern