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Originally published on 04/04/2002
Once upon a time, four young men in Israel created an instant messenger (IM) program called ICQ. It was free software, but users could contribute to the developers. There was some revenue from that -- the product did have 16 million users -- but Mirabilis, the company that made ICQ, was hardly becoming the next Microsoft. However, when AOL bought Mirabilis for $407 million in 1998, the developers were suddenly business geniuses.
Fast Facts:
Cerulean Studios
www.trillian.cc |
| CEO |
Scott Werndorfer. Last job: Security consultant, Integralis |
| HQ |
Brookfield, CT |
| Employees |
2 |
| Market |
Instant messaging interoperability |
| Funding |
No outside funding. "Talking to" VCs |
| Profitable |
Yes |
That was a transaction of a different era. Nobody's going to become a zillionaire today making an ICQ work-alike. Still, a current product, Cerulean Studios' Trillian, is rapidly winning a large and loyal user base, and, like the early ICQ, it's also supported by donations.
Trillian isn't an IM system by itself. It's a desktop application that works with the existing IM networks AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, Microsoft Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. So if you have contacts on various networks, you no longer need to run the proprietary software for each one. If you've followed instant messaging, you know that this is a feat; AOL and Microsoft traditionally block third-party clients from using their systems. But Trillian stays ahead of these maneuvers, primarily because the company is solely focused on providing this function, according to 21-year-old CEO Scott Werndorfer. Scott tells me that other companies that have offered interoperability really used that function to push their own networks.
AOL claims that foreign systems compromise its security. Of course, AIM by itself is notoriously insecure, and there is an emerging market in professional-grade (secure, reliable, and auditable) instant messaging. While crowded, that sounds like a good market for Cerulean. Corporations pay for software, after all. I admire what Cerulean is doing and personally I find Trillian indispensable, but eventually instant messaging networks will become interoperable, and the product's uniqueness will evaporate.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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