Author : Matt Jacob
Matt Jacob : Hello Alex, thank you for your time. Can you give us some information on Gossamer-Threads' history?
Alex Krohn : I founded Gossamer Threads back in 1995. Like most businesses back then, it started when I was approached by a company I had worked with who needed an internet presence. Those were the days when it required programmers to do HTML (and you could tell when looking at the poor results).
My first programming job was to create a directory management system to replace a hand maintained links site. While building the admin, I saw how often I would want to be able to add, modify, delete and search on text datbases. A couple of weeks later, DBMan was born (for those not familiar, it's our flatfile database management program). When the custom job wrapped up a couple of weeks later, we had our second product, and the one we would soon build our business on, Links!
Since then we have grown to 15 people, with 7 products, most of which are generally considered best in class. With 12 of the 15 people developers, we are not sitting idle either, we have three new products scheduled to be released in October!
MJ : What is your central goal for G-T?
AK : Our goal has always been to produce the best web applications we can. We pride ourselves in the technical quality of all our programs. Our focus now is to provide something no other company can, a truly integrated software package. It's easy to visit your local cgi directory, and pick out a good forum package, a nice email system and a neat directory system. However, when your visitors to your site are forced to handle three different logins, and you as an admin have to deal with three different technologies, it quickly becomes a mess.
Because of our relative size and experience in this marketplace, we are striving to offer a completely integrated experience. All our products will soon feature a central user database system, a common plugin system, and the same flexible template system.
This is really what will separate us from other companies.
MJ : How do those goals directly relate to community software and/or community development?
AK : The integration described above will be the strongest selling point to any community webmaster. Imagine if when your user signs up, they can access a discussion forum, manage their own links, use web based email and much more all from the same login! Imagine being an admin being able to go in and delete a user, and all the applications are updated! This is what we plan to provide.
MJ : How do you feel about the enormous growth of internet communities in the past 3-5 years?
AK : I love it! It's this growth that has taken us from just me programming by myself, to a dedicated team of over 15! It's a great relief to me to not have to be the coder, designer, accountant and sales person anymore.
I think specialized internet communities can offer so much more then the large portals can ever hope of doing. Not only are they personally satisfying (visiting our forum is still something I do on a daily basis), but it can be finanically rewarding too.
MJ : Do you view this huge growth explosion as a positive or a negative thing for the internet in general?
AK : Definately a positive for Gossamer Threads, and a positive for the internet in general. The major portals can't offer the same user experience that smaller ones do. When you get someone who is obsessed about a particular hobby, and they setup a portal site for it, it tends to work a lot better.
MJ : What part does G-T plan on playing in the future?
AK : We have spent the best part of the last year creating a set of core modules that all our products share. With this, we can rapidly create new applications that will use the same technologies (template parsing, SQL access, installer, etc) and be integrated with the rest of our applications.
We plan on expanding our community offerings with applications like mass mailing/list management tools, member area/password protection tools, and much more. Several of these are already under development.
MJ : What kind of website can benefit most from using web solutions provided by G-T?
AK : Our largest user base is people running specialized directories, but we have quite a wide product base. Some different type of sites that use our products include:
- Of course, portals use Links SQL to manage lists of links, however we often find Links SQL used for image galleries or classifieds.
- Community sites often add Gossamer Mail to replace everyone.net (too many banners) or to enhance the community experience.
- Large companies using DBMan/DBMan SQL to manage a database on an intranet.
- ISP's using FileMan or MySQLMan in website control panels and much more. With over 7 products, all of them pretty flexible, there's a lot to choose from.
MJ : What plans do you have for integrating your current or future products to be used with the UBB?
AK : We have several Authentication modules that will integrate our products in with others. For instance, our Auth_UBB plugin for Gossamer Mail will allow you to instantly give your forum users a free email address. It recognizes UBB's login, so users can move seamlessly between the applications. This is great for fan sites looking to make some extra money (as it can be an upsell for paid users).
I've always been very open in our partnering. I realize that we can't do everything, and there are a lot of great programs out there. We have partnered with major banner programs to provide integrated banner solutions using our plugin system. You download the plugin, and two clicks later you have an installed banner system.
MJ : What future G-T developments on the horizon do you think UBB users should be most excited about?
AK : One of the most unique things about our products is the plugin system. We have created a set of authentication modules that can integrate our products with products from other companies. We have a UBB plugin, as well as plugins from some other forum developers, and are always willing to create new ones.
The beauty of this is that the code is separated into a plugin, so upgrades are seamless. You don't need to redo your changes every time you want to upgrade.
MJ : What does the future hold for community software? In other words, where do we go from here?
AK : I've said it a lot, but I believe integration is key. Providing the end user with an "identity" on your community site will make the user come back time and again. Having them send emails from
[email protected], post news articles under the same username, submit links under that name, and of course post forum topics under the same name, while at the same time making it seamless to the end user is essential.
Having an integrated system is the solution.
MJ : You've got some exciting things coming Alex. I like your outlook on the web and on community software specifically. Again, thank you for your time.
