Working Up a Grap-petite

We were thrilled to see Ralf test-drive Grapevine, and flattered that he described it as 'really cool" and "amazing". Ralf isn't frivolous with praise, and his compliments carry genuine weight.

Ralf clearly had a lot of fun using the service, and that's another thing we were really pleased to see. From the outset, we wanted Grapevine to be a place where all those things that make human conversation 'human' flourish. Things like spontaneity, serendipity, expressiveness... and certainly fun, too.

One interesting aspect of the post is the reference to naming that will initially be new to most of our users. This is something we did not choose to do lightly, but in the end felt it was justified on balance. In particular, in the case of 'vine', we wanted a really snappy name that captured a combination of a group of people and a topic of conversation... where both the group and the topic could be large or small, dynamic or static, long or short lived. This versatility is the very foundation of Grapevine. We toyed around with somewhat established and well understood names like 'channel', 'room', 'conversation' and so forth, but found them all to carry too much connotational baggage. In the end, 'vine' won out for us, but as always we're open to feedback from you all and will be sure to take on board any recurring themes!

We are also grateful for suggestions around making the live / 'tuned in' aspects of Grapevine more obvious, and blurring the boundaries between real-time and 'not-quite-real-time' experience. It is helping us shape a couple of features we are planning for the very near future.

Grapevine represents a concept that is a little different to most voice and message based applications on the web today. Although new things can be exciting, they usually require change - and change too can be exciting, but also difficult and challenging. Our ultimate aim is to create a product that delights users and makes their lives a little easier, and we recognise that we will only succeed by putting you, dear user, at the heart of everything we do. With your support, and constructive feedback like Ralf's, we will get there, together.