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Basecamp Next

37signals.com

122 pointswlll78 comments

With Trello[1] and ASANA[2] out there for free, they have no chance but announce upcoming facelift / upgrade -- so existing customers will stay around, and perhaps, when releasing, attracting new users as well.

1. http://trello.com

2. http://asana.com

I'm pretty sure their chances are just fine. :) They are still making hires which I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do if they saw their company declining. Also trello and asana attract very different markets of customers I'm sure compared to 37signals core demographic. Take a look at the featured customer videos at basecamphq.com. It's wedding planners, brand design, a self help firm. Not software developers who seem to be the folks gravitating to trello and asana.

If my business is threatened by several competitors one of the things I might do is hire new people to work on new initiatives.

I didn't find Trello very useful or easy to use. It's a new way to do things but probably not the ideal way to do them.

True. At this very moment using Trello has made one ongoing project very hard to manage.

Trello and Asana are free (last time I checked). It'll be hard to make money from people using their apps for free. No money = no app improvement. IMHO.

perhaps, they will start charging for larger teams, or advanced features.

Both companies are well funded (and founded by wealthy people), so I do not worry about the 'no money == no app improvement' case

Don't forget about http://apollohq.com

Why would I get downvoted for sharing a product I use? I am in no way affiliated with the team or product.

37signals, when will you learn? You need to put up a LaunchRock lander, tell us little to no information about what you're doing and make us think you hate users enough to never let anybody in.

a todo-app, a revolutionary mobile chat, a breakthrough internet collaboration device. a todo-app, a mobile chat, a internet collaboration device. are you getting it?

Is it just me or the copywriting is incredibly similar to Apple's when they introduced iPhone 4[1]: "This changes everything. Again"

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1edQuxclUs

I thought exactly the same while reading that text. It is definitely Appleish marketing.

It reminded me another Apple ad, though surely it is not a copy

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984"

Yeah, I thought that it was an ironic homage to the Apple way of launching.

Except 37signals didn't change nothing. The only thing about Basecamp is that it's so easy to use.

What Apple does is innovation. 37signals just makes things foolproof.

* only thing about Basecamp is that it's so easy to use.*

Goddamn, if I could say that about the apps I write, I could retire happy. Being “easy to use” is an amazing accomplishment for anything, especially project management.

Sure it is, but calling that "reinventing" is unfair to people who actually do something innovative.

They're up to... building a new Basecamp. Less interesting than building a new Segway or whatnot - that could be useful information for the title.

Basecamp could theoretically be less interesting than a Segway. But a Segway won't help me run a freelance biz with a guy 4,500 miles away.

Utility is far more valuable in many ways than entertainment.

Can't wait for the new updates

But there would be less clicky-clicky if the useful information as actually in the headline.

In early 2012, 37signals will introduce Basecamp Next , And you'll see why 2012 won't be like "2012"

Hardly it

LMAO

You know what we use for project management... our bug tracking system. It seems like some of the most influential people in our industry (Spolesky and dhh) have to write software and make books on "their" philosophy of getting shit done. How about changing the topic for once. You know like solving the power crisis or something.

They're in the pickaxe business so what else would they talk about except mining? If you're looking for a different kind of luminary look elsewhere.

It's easier and smarter to be in the pickaxe business. All the 'miners' will spread the word online in the form of inbound links, and for free! This type of marketing and propegation is much more profitable than having a sales department. Kudos to 37Signals for being very smart marketers in addition to being talented designers and developers!

So google should have stayed with just search? Come on... I would love to have DHH's clout. He could start a whole bunch of new products/ideas and easily get thousands of people to signup. Or is that a 37signals philosophy: "stick with what you know and don't try anything new"?

That's not even apples to oranges, that's apples to orange groves.

I suspect that the 'new basecamp' will be a seamless integration of Basecamp, Campfire and Highrise with one simple API where people can extend it to whatever level they wish. So Basecamp 2.0 will be a project management platform. Maybe an SAP and Salesforce of Small Businesses?

Adding to the above, I also assume they would be the first major app that would be fully acessible via the browser. Maybe 'kill' the need for the app store?

I look forward to what it would be.

SAP and Salesforce of Small Businesses

We did something like that in mid-2000s as an Open Source project (http://openpsa2.org/). Never really caught fire with us, though. Business apps are a difficult area.

Business apps are a difficult area

Open Source and Free do not work for serious businesses.

For open source, you want someone responsible. Except you have a strong re-seller and support program, I doubt it will work.

Free is an entirely different issue. A business will not want to be 'Gowallad'. i.e, Sell suddenly and say have your data and thanks for your time. We are shutting down next month. See thread discussing this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318458

When you create a company i.e charge money, businesses know you are serious and have someone to complain to. Then you have a higher chance of gaining traction.

Open Source and Free do not work for serious businesses.

That is probably a too extreme take on this as well. Open Source is a great "insurance policy" for companies, but not enough on its own. You also want a company dedicated to supporting and developing the software that your company uses so that you can have a proper contractual relationship into it.

For example, MySQL AB was running quite a good business supporting the freely licensed database for companies using it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL_AB

I am surprised, I thought 37s was against rewrites.

They're going to blog about "how we broke the rules" and probably write a new book about that.

They're pretty successful with their belief so far and it's time to get more revenue from something new.

From casual observation they have a few strong opinions which seem to be based on their experiences and requirements up to that point but which change when their requirements change.

I've no issue with that - as your knowledge changes your opinions should be open to change. You could knock them for having strident opinions they later modify but I'd rather be grateful that they are willing to share and learn publicly as that way everyone has the chance to learn with them.

I agree. I'm a 37s fanboy. Web tech has made a quantum leap in the last year. The difference between rails 3.1 and rails 2.8 is huge. Not to mention html5, css3 and new javascript libraries such as backbone-js. These are game changers. Adapting them means a rewrite.

There's no Rails 2.8, I guess you meant Rails 2.3...

There are three major versions of Rails that are still maintained: 2.3.n, 3.0.y, and 3.1.x

http://rubygems.org/gems/rails/versions

It is not necessarily a rewrite. It may be a fork of the existing product. All the page really hints at is some dramatic changes to the interface.

From what dhh posted on Twitter it sounds like a full rewrite:

> The tech and the design is all new, all fresh.

https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/144061889201188865

I agree that UI is really going to be the story. Customers don't need to care about what's underneath.

DHH's Twitter suggests otherwise. He talks about the joy of starting from scratch developing with rails/master. Can't link to it because I'm on a phone.

My guess is it's going to be an HTML5, realtime, mobile-focused thingy. Also probably backed by their mobile/html5/javascript framework "Cinco".

So great to see this. I'm a fan of their products, but they have really started to feel a bit outdated (mobile support, real-time, Dropbox integration). I hope they keep the core of building great communication tools without too much shenanigans, and reinterpret them for today's online environment.

This partly explains the lack of updates to PrototypeJS (last version shipped over a year ago). My hunch is that if they are building something from scratch, they have abandoned Prototype entirely in favor of jQuery.

Basecamp isn't what explains the lack of updates to PrototypeJS. jQuery itself is, however.

It is (MUCH) faster, got traction quicker, has a larger community and is definitely more flexible. Rails moved from Prototype for good with version 3, which was released a little over a year ago - it would make no sense for Basecamp to stick with prototype.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence but the image on that site closely resembles the the temporary facade of the Covent Garden (London) Apple Store while it was still under construction: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GTXylOUSEM0/TFNV8AbQfQI/AAAAAAAADM...

Unveiling things by having a velvet curtain or cloth on top (and then lifting it up!) has been done for decades, perhaps centuries. It's not unique to Apple or to 37signals, it's a common occurrence that they were expressing digitally.

I'm not arguing with any of that, however these two works share a lot more than just the act of "unveiling", in particular they both reveal a small but identifiable part of a logo.

In both cases there's no physical product to unveil (one is a retail store that is too big to be unveiled and the other is a service with no real physical manifestation) so the graphical representation of the product is abstracted away to a logo which is being unveiled. Only showing a small (but identifiable) part of the logo creates a sense of motion, it tells a story. It communicates that there's something new and exciting going to happen very soon in relation to this well known logo. In my opinion this is a creative idea that indeed builds upon the old tradition of unveiling things but it also goes way beyond it.

Their real 'competition' is iOS and native platforms. They never made it big on these platforms, and they loose traction because of that. They must rethink their approach for tablet and mobile, and please...not in HTML5.

I really wish it was two-way Highrise contacts integration with Google Apps.

SVN has been quiet the past few months.

It seriously makes me wonder how these guys have survived so long without making any changes. It's the same today as when I had an account 6 years ago. It's basic and functional.

Game changer my arse, it's about time they changed it!

And whoever down votes me I want a reason why you think 37 signals is so fantastic when they have essentially changed nothing in 6 years.

For me the impressive part is that they've buckled down, slowly evolved the core in a way to add features without upsetting their existing happy customers to an extent that there's been much screaming online, and released additional applications along the same template that have also been well received.

Basecamp provided them with product/market fit - iterating on a successful business model in such a way as to gradually grow a profitable company might mean that they should no longer be considered a startup, but it's no less impressive.

Perhaps more importantly, for those of us wanting to build a company we enjoy working in that isn't trying to either (a) scale massively (b) sell (c) IPO they're a great reminder that such stories do exist.

Plus I think I rather enjoy the sheer chutzpah of their shameless self promotion, even if I do like to think that I've not entirely drunk the koolaid.

The fact that a product built six years ago is still relevant and effective is testament to just how fantastic their original decisions were.

Also, the fact that BaseCamp has quite decent APIs has enabled a "cottage industry" of third-party clients and add-ons to evolve. This has probably made the product a lot more durable:

http://basecamphq.com/extras?cohort=Landing%20Headlines%20/%...

Try searching for something

> I want a reason why you think 37 signals is so fantastic when they have essentially changed nothing in 6 years.

Maybe they just didn't need to change anything?

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I personally outgrew their products within weeks of using them. I find their base functionality good and solid but nothing really ever extends beyond that. Maybe my experience was that their product simply didn't fit my needs but I felt it was always missing something that they never included.

I always felt I was going to go back in a year and it would be there. It simply wasn't.

So this really is for me an "about time" moment.

You are not the typical user; what makes 37Signals so good is that they clearly understand just how dumb typical users are and design apps normal users can actually use without having to get their tech buddy to explain it to them.

And honestly, it's not dumb enough. Email dominates the workflow of most businesses because that's about the complexity most users can handle, write mail, send button. I've seen people use Basecamp for weeks and still be confused by the fact that there's more than one tab.

Yeah, I feel like this questions answers itself. Why would you change a hugely profitable and popular piece of software? 37signals set the bar for web-based project management, period.

Why change Windows? Eventually all software becomes outdated.

They're smart enough to milk the non-technical low end user. There's a lot more of them than there are the power-users.

So for their revenue stream of constantly revolving low-end users not changing much is the right thing to do.

You answered your own question: "It's basic and functional."

+1 for Trello, I am a big fan

But will the rewrite be in node.js ?

They're going to add secondary mailing addresses!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They found out that Rails doesn't scale, and are redoing everything in hand-coded, no framework PHP.

(Jokes aren't only for Reddit, ya know)

judging by your comment and mine it would appear downmods are always for jokes, around here...

Rebuttal: http://i.imgur.com/pRUqr.png

I think you created a new account in the wrong site. Thanks for your great contribution to this thread, but, no thanks.

hahaha

That's a rather rude signup form. Put in your email address -- if you're lucky or you're important, you get a "chance" at a beta invite.

Come on. Standard practice for beta invites these days.

They introduced the word "maybe": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZAL64E0DI#t=30m

And what exactly is wrong with that? It's just a game of enticing.

Seems like different people will get a different read, for me it's a chance to participate on an exciting new product from well known developers and innovators. If I don't get in the first invites what's the problem?

I'll eventually make it in just a bit later.

It's 37signals. If you haven't heard of them before, you're incredibly lucky to be even allowed to view the webpage of the hipster gods. Let alone get a beta invite.

Strikingly similar logo concept to Uber...

http://blog.uber.com/2011/12/05/take-ubers-new-logo-for-a-sp...

Maybe 37signals are back to client-design work... ;)

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