A Diary of a Tech Fan: Gloo.com.ph -- real-time fun collaboration tool. Think Google Wave Minus the Productivity

The first time I had a look inside Gloo.com.ph, I cannot help but liken it to Google Wave where there is like a big virtual whiteboard where everybody can write/collaborate on it at the same time, and everybody can see the changes real-time. So while Google wave is for your work, Gloo is for fun-like activities like sharing pictures and videos, notes, doodles, and cotton-candy rainbow stuff.

Globe Broadband Plans Add-on | All-Access to Gloo from Globe Broadband on Vimeo.

But I believe it is NOT right to say that Gloo copied the real-time collaboration idea from Google Wave since it existed way back in 2008, while Google Wave launched sometime in 2009. Maybe it's more of Google found out about Gloo, and decided to make a serious version of it and then call it Wave. Well, I'm not really sure who came first or what, but one thing I'm sure is that Google was first to announce that they will no longer make any further developments on Wave (Note: Google wave is still available).

Gloo.com.ph won in the GlobeLabs Challenge 2008 for Mobile Social Networking. It is developed by Berkadoods composed of 2 dudes -- Jun Tagama and Jerome Punzalan.

Jerome Punzalan

I had a very quick chat with one of the individuals behind it, and learned that Gloo and Berkadoods just all started with GlobeLabs Challenge. They just decided to join the contest without any thing developed yet because of the big prize (300K). They developed the initial product from scratch for a month for the contest, and they even had to do it remotely since Jun Tagama had a business trip to Australia. Then, came the GlobeLabs awarding with only one of them to accept the prize since their 'barkada'/group was set to fly to Macau on the same day.

They impressed the judges with their product concept that they wanted to commercialize it but Globe Labs could not deal with individuals, thus the 2 dudes had not much choice but to register Berkadoods (Berkadoods is the name of their barkada/group) in SEC. Thus, it took almost a year for them to finalize their contract with Globe. (Maybe SEC should have some special ruling for start-up groups that makes registration process easier and faster.) And, I guess the rest is for next-time because it's not yet history. =)

So what you can do in Gloo?

You and your friends can share pictures, doodle together -- whatever changes your friend will do on your shared space will also show up in your space. It's like having one whiteboard/corkboard where you put whatever stuff, only you do it virtually.

You can doodle together.