A team of RIT graduates has
produced a new instant messenger
client called digsby that
they soon hope to launch as a
commercial product.
Steve Shapiro, an Information
Technology graduate and a former
president of Student Government,
is the creator of the company dotSyntax, which employs six other
RIT graduates. “There are currently
four programmers, one system administrator,
one marketing director,
and myself. We are located here at
the [RIT] Incubator,” he said.
Shapiro created his company and
the idea behind digsby because
of an assignment to write a business
plan. He came up with the
idea of an IM platform because it
did not need a large capital base.
When he was done with the assignment,
he realized that he had
a viable business plan sitting in
his hands. “After this class, I had
this 100 page booklet of my plan
and I really had faith in it,” he said.
“So I pulled out my rolodex to see
if [I knew anyone who] would be
interested in investing.”
“The financing was with two private
investors, and that’s how the project
got started,” explained Shaprio.
dotSyntax is a for profit venture,
although they “are not yet operating
on a revenue model.” It’s not
clear how dotSyntax could switch
to generating profit, as the team
has kept quiet about their business
intentions during interviews.
Several online publications speculate
that such a model could employ
some form of advertising.
So, what sets digsby apart from other IM integration
clients like Trillian or Pidgin? Per Shapiro, there are
two key differences. “The first major difference is the
usability aspect… Our goal was to make a very user
friendly [interface] aimed at a mass market audience.
Therefore, the core focus of this operation was to make
it very easy to use for the average person,” he said.
Shapiro believes this focus differentiates his team’s
product from other products on the market.
“The second major difference is the addition of email
and social networks [integration].” digsby sports six
instant messenger and six email clients that users can
integrate into the system. “The protocols were chosen
because they are the most popular,” said Shapiro.
The instant messenger clients available are AIM, MSN,
Yahoo!, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber; the email clients
are Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL/AIM Mail,
IMAP, and POP accounts. Some of these protocols were
“reversed engineered, which is a long and difficult
process... [so] the client took us two years to create.”
Users also have the options of using the social networks
Facebook and MySpace. More systems are soon
to be available.
Shapiro said that digsby is aimed for a global audience because of its client choices. Although ICQ is not popular in America, it was chosen
because it has a strong hold in “Russia, Israel, and a
few points around Europe.”
digsby is not named after anyone or anything
in particular. Shapiro came up with 20 interesting available domain names, and then
sent out an opinion survey. The name ‘digsby’
came back as the winner.
Shapiro said that the company hopes to have a complete
launch in the next two or three weeks. In the
meantime, RIT students can download the program
for free by going to the website www.digsby.com and
typing in the code RIT.
