Free Group Chat App Convore Launches To Challenge Campfire

Convore comes from the minds of developers Leah Culver and Eric Florenzano, as well as designer Eric Maguire. The latter two were recently working at online gaming powerhouse Mochi Media. Meanwhile, Culver and Florenzano met while coordinating some Django meetups in San Francisco, and the collaboration took off from there. The team has been working on Convore full time for approximately the past two weeks, out of an office in SOMA.Convore is a Y Combinator startup that’s out to challenge the likes of Campfire and IRC with a free group-chat web app. Users can create groups, either public or private, with multiple topics in each group, all free of charge. Private groups require would-be members to get moderators’ permission to join. Users can pick public and private group participants from your Facebook or Twitter friends, or they can invite members via e-mail. Because it has options to connect one’s profile with one’s social networks, its onboarding process is fraught with opportunities to start chatting right away with people who already happen to be one’s friends. The instant messaging is quick and incredibly simple to set up. It features a clean interface, and it’s usable in a way that very few new web apps are. We also like the Mentions feature, which allows users to see who has sent them a message or replied to their message from within a group chat — an especially good feature for when chats get fast-paced or “noisy” or for when a person goes offline. And while the uses for individuals and friends are undoubtedly there, what really excites us is what the app means for users in businesses, from tech startups to distributed SMBs to the enterprise.