Thanks for trying GabMail. I think you’ll be impressed with our threading feature.

As for the difference between GabMail and GabJam, each was designed to function in the same way traditional text email does. You can send them to any number of people who can reply to and/or forward the video messages and the ongoing conversations are threaded. GabJam, though, takes things to another level. Once you start a GabJam, anyone who receives the link will be able to see every video in the thread AND EVERY ONE THAT’S EVER ADDED TO IT. Save a GabJam link as a favorite or bookmark, click that link tomorrow, and you may see five or ten more videos that people have added to the Jam. Click it a week after that and there could be hundreds, even thousands of new videos added to the thread. And since GabJam messages are meant to be viral and collaborative, you can forward that link to your friends who can forward it to their friends and so on. Anyone who receives the link can add to the Jam along the way by clicking Reply and recording a new video.

Anytime someone begins a new thread, we politely ask if they’d like to ‘Jam it’. Say yes if you want your video email to take on a life of its own!

Hope that helps.

Best, Mark.

From where do you spring? Tell us about yourself. Interested.

About semantics: From my viewpoint, both platforms are sharing plus communications. When you produce a work even if its intended for communications, it is still a work by copyright law. EULA is also based on this. It’s sharing in the sense I think you mean. What’s to stop forwarding? This may be a gray area but it is likely to err on this side.

And what’s not sharing when you broadcast this pseudo-vlog to many (friends, relatives, employees and perhaps an audience of business prospects)?

It’s all video whether a live message, a movie short or recording of a crime. And whether hosted or emailed–let’s not be self-conscious of the appliances or distribution method. Much ado. But truly glad you are engaged.

I visited http://www.freegabmail.com and http://www.eyejot.com. I don’t see why you call either one a video sharing service. I see them as communications tools like regular email except with video. I can envision some good uses for the threading of video messages in GabMail. I’ll have to try that. What’s the difference between GabMail and GabJam?

The ad’s on http://www.freegabmail.com are tolerable. What is http://www.eyejot.com planning?

Thanks!

You’ve seen through my transparent ploy for sympathy! We’ve actually declined offers of funding throughout our nine months of life although we’re preparing for a round later this quarter.

Regarding recording time, I believe it’s actually more meaningful than one might expect. Especially since the alternative for eyejot and others is a subscription service. The technology that we’re employing is extremely fresh and ahead of the curve. It allows us to stream using far less bandwidth and far fewer resources than any one else out there at the moment. One of the many advantages is that we can provide our services free of charge even given the high horsepower demands of video.

As David has pointed out here and elsewhere, eyejot is not GabMail. We very consciously developed a service that tracks as closely as possible with traditional text email. As a result, it’s more flexible than any other videomail service and it has far greater utility. Threading of messages alone puts us in a class by ourselves. If what users are looking for is yet another way to post videos on websites or if you’ve got less music than your eyepod can handle, eyejot’s got a leg up on us. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a truly free and comprehensive video email service with an option to add extremely powerful collaborative and viral capabilities, then I believe you’re looking for GabMail. Of course, you can also add a GabMail video to your web page.

As for advertising, we’ve taken great pains to apply both banner and video ads in an unobtrusive, non-annoying manner that still provides tremendous value for advertisers. And we’ll continue to improve on and innovate in this critical area.

Thanks for your time and insight Marie. I’m looking forward to your thoughts about GabMail. If you’re interested I’ll be happy to let you know when our social networking sites are ready for demos. The first will be dedicated to GabJam and the second will be our namesake site.

Best, Mark.

Sounds like you are in a battle of the “2 for 1″ vs “3 for 1 pizza”. In the end, the amount of free minutes you offer will only bring you temporary cherry-pickers. (And David I don’t think you should embark in minutes for less war.) Be careful of the meme, “free”. This is a cue replete with dangerous meaning that may hamper your ability to monetize. You’ll end up with teeny boppers who use free text mail; is your model going to be advertising?

Your sustained success will have to be 360. How intuitive it is. How you innovate further. How easy it is. How secure it is. How it fulfills its promise. And how fast you respond to problems and customers. (I trust you think about these things endlessly.) Otherwise you will commoditize yourself into a meaningless price corner.

Remember the bubble happened because everything was free. If advertising is your rev model you will have to draw gads of users to get the CPMs that will get the attention of advertisers. Yet it’s doable. But you will lose users if you stretch this model too far. In this young market you’ll have to locate the alphas to trigger buzz. In this way you would be different from Eyejot–I suspect theirs is a broader appeal.

You have a worthy opponent in Eyejot as you can see from David’s post. There is a lot of money in the valley, even in TO. You should go after it. This is time well spent. This post has received many views in a span of 2 hours–but do you want to spend your days posting? You will get the attention of a few tech blogs; but it’s not a good marketing strategy and there’s no time for this. Three months is a critical window for first movers–yours is less. I’m not sure you want to hear this stuff but I do appreciate entrepreneurs–they are a special breed. And yes, I will try Gabmail and report back.

In terms of differentiations with things like gabmail, the two products aren’t very similar. We’re a comprehensive messaging solution allowing our users to view their video messages from any web browser, anwhere, anytime. We specifically set out to remove the requirement of using traditional email as a crutch to support video links.

We also support iTunes and iPods directly, since we know our users want choice and are sophisticated in their use of technology. Plus, this model supports a grab and go approach to viewing video messaging. We also support mobile devices, which appeals to a very wide audience, especially business users. No matter where I am, I’m able to view my Eyejot messages on my Blackberry. If you have a Windows Mobile device, Nokia or similarly capable phone you’ll be able to enjoy the same benefits. Of course, mobile devices in the US are becoming more sophisticated and the networks they operate better and faster. Eyejot will be there to support them!

Another important difference is our site widget. This lets you embed Eyejot functionality into ANY web page – whether it’s a blog like this or a social networking site like MySpace or Piczo. Think of it as a video voice mail feature where you can control your video greeting and take video messages when friends visit your site or page. The site widget will also be similar to our OS X Desktop Widget and Vista Gadget that we’ll be rolling out shortly, along with an XP tray event notifer. Again – things to further separate Eyejot from a reliance on traditional email.

For anyone considering DEMO events in the future – there probably no better place to spend your marketing budget. Dollar for dollar it’s one of the best investments a startup can make. I’ve been to three so far and they’re fantastic events.

I’m the CEO of a company called Gabsight (www.freegabmail.com) that also has a free video email service out in the world. Like eyejot, we’re flash-based so there’s nothing to download. But with Gabmail, there’s also no registration so you truly hit the site running. We also have many exclusive features that no other videomail company (sightspeed, flixn, xyngomail, eyejot) offers: 2 minutes of free recording time (going up to 5 minutes by this Monday); threading of all messages so that any video in an ongoing conversation can be accessed with a single click; a collaborative/viral option called GabJam that supercharges any video thread; and an option to instantly ‘cloak’ any video that a user might find objectionable. You can also embed any Gabmail into a web page.

We unfortunately didn’t have the tens of thousands of dollars that it takes to launch at something like Demo ’07 so I hope you’ll give GabMail a try and let me us know your thoughts.

Best, Mark.