Show HN: Download-free screensharing for better customer support | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Download-free screensharing for better customer support

usefirefly.com

38 pointsdshipper29 comments

Hey guys, I'm Dan Shipper one of the co-founders of Firefly. Just to answer a few likely questions:

1. It's download free because it runs completely in the browser with Javascript

2. We're differentiated from other similar services like GoInstant because GoInstant has a completely enterprise strategy. They're not self-serve and they work with big companies. We're tackling the lower end of the market.

3. We're helping to solve the distribution problem inherent to marketing to SMBs with a screensharing API. The API basically turns us into a Twilio for screensharing meaning that anyone can introduce our screensharing technology into their customer support apps with just a few lines of code.

Any feedback about the product you have would be incredibly helpful. Thanks!

I think this is pretty cool but you're sharing a Web page rather than "screen sharing", right? That is, it's good for webapps but not for Excel, etc? It'd be cool if HTML5 got an API to do proper screen sharing one day though..

Technically it's co-browsing software. So basically what we do is grab the DOM from the customer side and transfer it to the representative's side. There's no screenshot involved which gives us a number of advantages

1. It's more private. The rep doesn't see your whole screen, just the contents of the page. 2. It's more secure. We can redact DOM elements with sensitive information like passwords so that they never hit our servers and are never seen by the rep.

If I remember correctly, one of the AngelHack winners did shared browsing paired with video chat. http://sharebrowse.com/

Is video something you want to integrate or would you rather keep it to only browsing sessions?

We may do that in the future, but for now we're concentrated exclusively on screensharing.

Firefly fits in perfectly with the North Inc. (and Dan's) mentality, I love it:

--1. Address an outdated market: customer support for enterprises. Business doesn't need to be sexy.

--2. Make money now, not later. Sign up, pay now. For those willing to send an email, there's a demo available.

--3. No need to accept funding. North Inc. pushes products. Period.

--4. All the while, they're all still in school learning philosophy, finance, management, and much more.

Congrats to North Inc. on a successful launch. I can't wait to hear the numbers and read the many articles.

Thanks! After spending the summer building the product, we're really excited to publicly launch Firefly. Your comment definitely captures our mindset - how many times do you call into a customer support line today and it just sucks? We think support is ripe for disruption and being able to see your screen instantly makes the lives of customers and reps that much easier.

Interesting service. Couple of small issues:

#1. http://usefirefly.com/learn-more (Our script tag will add a support button to the right side of every page it is installed on.) … but the image shows it on the left side

#2. http://usefirefly.com/pricing says ie9+ and http://usefirefly.com/learn-more says ie8+ under highlights. Which one is it?

#3. I don't understand why you use requirejs to load your js. This causes 2+ hits and a larger download. Instead, you should be wrapping it with almond for less overhead. While you are at it, how about also async loading your js too.

#1. Good catch, changing that now. The button also has the ability to be hidden and the screensharing activated via Javascript or keyboard shortcuts.

#2. IE9+ with IE8 coming soon. Good catch, thanks!

#3. That's actually a screenshot from an outdated code snippet. We've gotten rid of the requireJS completely and now just use our own JS to load everything in.

Thanks for the feedback :)

This is Justin, another Firefly co-founder. Dan's correct in that those screenshots are outdated. Our javascript is compiled down to one file (other than our loader) and both are loaded in asynchronously, so everything is fast with only two http requests.

cool. thanks.

Hardcore...

* NOTICE: All information contained herein is, and remains * the property of North Incorporated and its suppliers, * if any. The intellectual and technical concepts contained * herein are proprietary to North * and its suppliers and may be covered by U.S. and Foreign Patents, * patents in process, and are protected by trade secret or copyright law. * Dissemination of this information or reproduction of this material * is strictly forbidden unless prior written permission is obtained * from North.

Sorry, but the demo video is almost unwatchable. Very slow paced, and when screenshots are show, they are quickly faded back out to a blue screen with some text. The narration is slow paced and the background music is not necessary.

Thanks for the feedback, admittedly we're hardly video experts :). We'll get that sorted out in the next few weeks or so.

I hope you've thought about security. There should be a simple point-and-click way for agents to block call requests from a single end-user IP address or a range of IP addresses. Otherwise you'll get a DoS attack from the first bored teenager who decides that clicking "Call support" repeatedly on your client's website is more fun than making prank calls.

You should probably use SSL for something like this -- at least the business end that actually hosts the scripts and handles the DOM exchange -- but I'm sure you've already thought of that.

Yes, we're always thinking about security and we take it very seriously. Great suggestions! As you guessed, we do use ssl to encrypt all transmission of data that powers the browser-sharing.

This brings up the esoteric piece of knowledge that I have about Microsoft squatting on firefly.com for over a decade and a half now, and not doing anything with it.

Maybe you can reverse hijack it eventually.

Don't you feel that "Screen-Sharing" is a bit of a stretch? I don't see where I can share anything other than the current browser window's content.

This would be confusing for the client and the end user trying understand what they are agreeing to.

A more appropriate title would be something that would allude to the fact that really you are just sharing the page the user is browsing.

Am i wrong in this assumption?

We chose screensharing over a word like "cobrowsing" because we felt that people understood more clearly exactly what was going on. It's definitely not an exact term, i.e. you can't see the whole screen, but it is screensharing in the sense that you absolutely see part of what's going on.

We'll definitely have to go back and reconsider though, if people feel like it's misleading.

Agreed. We just changed our headline from "screen sharing" to "browser-sharing".

Amazing product idea!

You should also be able to buy connectivity by the hour. To me, this makes more sense than the bulk pack.

I do like the idea of having a pricing option to target the lowest end of the market -- experiments, prototypes, one-man startups, and the like, which might not need the service very often, and might not have a big enough budget to justify $30 per month.

If there is a market for this, great. But even though I do user support on a daily basis, I don't see myself using this anytime soon. I rather create screen casts or take screen shots. It's exactly the same thing, but I only have to do it once and then it can be viewed by everyone. I also like to have instructions written down, either in a support forum or in an e-mail. The user can go back and read the instructions again, if he struggles with the same problem the next time. Also, I can write most support e-mails in less then five minutes. Phone calls take way longer most of the times.

That's a great point, we're thinking about allowing you to record sessions down the line and re-use them. For many companies screensharing is an integral part of the support process already, it's just slow and requires downloads. We're solving that problem for them.

There are definitely many companies that don't need this. E-commerce companies for example tend to get support requests that don't require screensharing e.g. "Can I get free shipping?" That reality is totally fine with us, because it allows us to concentrate our efforts on a small group of companies that really need this.

Thanks for the feedback!

Assuming you're not in the HFJ webfonts beta I'd replace Gotham (with Proxima Nova, maybe?) before you get sued into oblivion.

Thanks for the tip. We'll get that sorted out today :)

That's a great heads up, thank you for that. :)

When I see headlines and webpages like this, I am instantly turned off. I know I'm in a minority spot, but there are conflicting claims.

Screen-sharing and plugin-free are not compatible. This is webpage-sharing or DOM-sharing. A very cool take on this, but until I read the comments here, I was scouring your site for that detail. You don't need to hide it, or call it "DOM-sharing", but something.

Even just a screenshot example... your "learn more" page has everything but a shot of it in action.

Thanks for the feedback! We'll clarify our copy. I don't know if you got a chance to see our video (available on our homepage), but it gives a demo of all the features of the product in action. We're also more than happy to give you a demo over the phone, if you'd like. Just give us a call at 213.784.0273.

Best, Patrick

I missed the video, sorry, I have Flash set to load on demand in Chrome and the box is hidden entirely.

We just changed the headline from "screen sharing" to "browser-sharing". Hopefully that will clear up the confusion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com