Loading ...Nurphy.com has just launched, and I’m incredibly excited about telling you. You’ve heard similar words on this blog before now, but with Nurphy it’s very different.
Firstly, I’m a co-founder. Paul Horsfall and I have teamed-up to work full-time on Nurphy (Paul is a Ruby developer I met through some freelancing work on SoIndustry). Therefore, I’m not an ill-fated lone founder this time (as many web tech industry gurus see them), scrambling across the product design, development, scaling, promotion, business development, accounting, administration, and all the other tasks that a web start-up entails. There’s two heads working on this product, and it makes a world of difference. Most importantly, we both absolutely love the product; we couldn’t dream-up a more exciting opportunity.
Secondly, Nurphy.com is now my favorite web application, literally - so much so I’ve recorded a video describing how Paul & I got to coding Nurphy in the first place. Being sat in front of a camera with an expectation of having to talk 99% seriously would usually scare me to bits and turn me to a gibbering mess (it didn’t even occur to me to do this for SoIndustry or Notipal) - but with Nurphy, I’m just eager to share my enthusiasm:
Nurphy has been a bit of a whirlwind so far; the codebase has only been in existence for around a month, live on the Web for a few weeks, but for Paul & I, Nurphy already makes blogging, tweeting, and email, feel strange. Neither of us were big tweeters anyway (I’m concluding that regular tweeting feels unnatural for all but the most vocal of people; I know very few people in the real world who use Twitter). Nurphy managed all this after the first time we used it for a conversation - it just felt right (and intuitive) because conversations existed before Nurphy, but conversations are facilitated by Nurphy.
But why Nurphy, what does Nurphy do, and how does it facilitate conversations? For the next paragraph I’ll detail issues I haven’t mentioned in the video (luckily Nurphy scratches tons of itches for me):
Since graduation I’ve made new contacts with a similar interest in web tech & start-ups. Every so often one of these contacts would make a friend request on facebook, which was strange considering I would subsequently get insights in to a whole load of information which wouldn’t have been brought-up in any previous conversations with the contact (e.g. meeting up to talk about web start-ups or Ruby on Rails, but then being told about how much they love their partner in a drunken status update). Maybe someone would follow you on Twitter, but that’s not particularly useful from a GTD point of view (especially if you don’t follow them back), and it certainly doesn’t cement an ability to hold insight & valuable conversations with someone. Then there’s LinkedIn. I can’t really say much more about LinkedIn; I’ve been registered for years, but LinkedIn hasn’t provided value for me (even when adding new contacts), and whenever I log-in I feel overwhelmed by data from contacts I never talk to. Finally, there’s email. Email just doesn’t have the simplicity, convenience, interface interactions, & conventions that I crave (that’s just for starters), so it’s time for something else.
Nurphy is the easiest way to send a message to someone and to turn it in to a conversation with multiple participants. It just works, it isn’t a tool that has to be used in certain social contexts (it works for anyone), and it certainly doesn’t come with University hangovers or tech-enthusiast associations. Nurphy is just about conversations, which, funnily enough, people naturally participate in. Nurphy gets you involved in conversations in the simplest way possible.
Screenshot Walk-through:
Your Nurphy homepage.
‘Share’ a message to start a public conversation.
Viewing a conversation.
Post your contributions at the top of the timeline.
Invite someone else to the conversation.
Share the star tag for your conversation (it doesn’t matter if your conversation is public or private; Nurphy figures out whether people are privy to a conversation when they try to access it).
Use your status to publicize your star tags.
‘Send In Private’ to start a private conversation (only listed participants can read & contribute).
Check your contacts page - if they’re in a conversation which they’re happy to share, maybe they’ll update their status to let you know.
Auto-updating Timelines: Nurphy gives an unobtrusive notification of new messages. Therefore, if you’re in a conversation, Nurphy doesn’t disrupt your timeline with new messages until you’re ready to read them.
Public conversations can make a one-way transition to ‘Semi-Public’ (soon to be renamed to ‘Exclusive’) for which only Participants can contribute, but uninvited people can become Followers, e.g. Michael Arrington and Scoble are having a public conversation; they may want to share it with the public, but on a ‘read-only’ basis. With semi-public conversations, we can all follow along, but only Arrington and Scoble will converse.
Followers can join and watch without interrupting your conversation; they’re still kept in the loop, and they’re listed on this tab.
You’re kept in the loop about new contributions to a conversation via your homepage. Nurphy makes it easy to stay in touch.
‘Popup’ a conversation to keep it to the side of your main browser window and watch it out of the corner of your eye. Watch new contributions appear in near real-time.
….and here’s the popup button (click it & see)
Last but not least; Nurphy pulls all your conversations involvements straight to your homepage. Contributions are folded in concertina fashion in to a single conversation ’slice’ on your home page, therefore you can instantly ‘Mark all as Not New’ all activity within a conversation without having to uncheck or delete stale messages further down (as you do with email). On Nurphy, conversations exist in one place.
What does Nurphy need now? Firstly, I would really, really like to have a conversation with you (on Nurphy). If you’ve read up to this point or watched the video, I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on Nurphy, and here’s how that can happen;
1) Start a public or private conversation with me on Nurphy (I don’t use email for conversations anymore), you can find me here http://Nurphy.com/Neil and my status will let you know about any public conversations I’m currently involved with (I tend to update my status whenever I join an interesting public convo)
2) Jump in to one of the public conversations on Nurphy and share you thoughts - perhaps http://Nurphy.com/*feedbk (the public conversation for feedback on Nurphy).
Not interested in talking about Nurphy? That’s not a problem, let’s try something else:
Favorite podcasts: @Paul suggests The Bugle (*abrn80)
Coen Brothers movies: Am I crazy for having missed out on Fargo and The Big Lebowski up to this point? @Paul is a big Coen brothers fan. (*s09f0k)
LinkedIn tips for graduates: How does a graduate go about building up the initial contacts they need to leverage network effects? (*xihhdf)
Ruby/Rails/Git: Don’t forget to run git prune to clean-up any differences between local and remote branches (*stgfqs)
Director Magazine and Share Prices: Where do you go for share tips? @Phill mentioned http://www.nakedtrader.co.uk (*stgfqs)
Pull Tiger Tail’s album launch: @Oli is looking forward to buying the uncompressed CD version, I opted for iTunes
2Screen conference in London: @Phil & I were discussing Boxee (*3xck62)
Finally, were you about to participate in a conversation for which you would like a) an easier way to manage it, and b) an opportunity to share it with a wider circle of potential participants via clearly defined public & private options, c) a short URL to help with the sharing? Please try Nurphy. I’d very be interested in participating. Nurph’ me.
