Toot toot! All aboard!

Sticking with the time-honored Web 2.0 tradition of failing to implement an entire product, TimeBridge is a web-based utility that helps you schedule meetings. It analyzes the attendees schedules (uh, provided they all use TimeBridge too) and lets you select from blocks of free time. It integrates with Google & Outlook calendars. Hooray.

The best part of this fail is that they somehow managed to raise $8.5M, probably pitching their exit strategy as a Google buyout. Right, because Google couldn't implement this feature on their own, with better integration to their calendar.

Scheduling People Isn't The Hardest Part

I served a sentence at Big Multinational Corp., so I have scheduled my share of pointless meetings. You need to schedule a meeting with people locally in your team and a team in Hyderabad. You need to book two conference rooms, one in each office, both with a videoconference unit and a projector. Both rooms should be large enough to hold the number of people scheduled. Hm, yeah, not as easy as adding the rooms as "people" in the system, is it?

Inside Google, Sergey Brin has this initiative called "features, not products". It's a good idea if you run a company that has products. I haven't figured out where features-as-products fits as a business model. You may leech some success off of a preexisting product, but you still have to make money somehow. Do you charge for your feature and create incentive for the original product maker to implement the feature themselves? Do you advertise with your feature and risk pissing off the original product maker by degrading user experience?

Come On You Guys, Wait Up!

I guess the hope for these guys is to form a symbiotic relationship with Google calendar. It feels a lot more like the fat kid trying to win the friendship of the cool kids in middle school, failing to realize that they only keep him around to abuse when they get bored. Unfortunately for TimeBridge, it can take years for that fat kid to realize what's going on.

Anyhow, I guess we'll see what kind of marginally useful calendaring feature $8.5 million can buy. Here's a tip: $8.5 million worth of hookers and blow provides a far better exit strategy than a tool that helps you schedule meetings.