Intercom to 'bring website owners closer to their users'

HAVING ESTABLISHED a subsidiary in the United States, web developers Contrast will launch its new Intercom service at the LessConf event at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta today.

Intercom is designed to bring “website owners closer to their users” by allowing them to publish targeted messages to their customers, according to Contrast chief executive Eoghan McCabe. Different messages can be programmed to appear depending on the actions of site visitors such as signing up for an account, visiting for the first time, or buying something.

Mr McCabe has temporarily relocated to San Francisco to support the launch of Intercom.

“We’re incorporating and setting-up an office here because of the readily available capital for such projects; venture money runs free and easily here for reputable web entrepreneurs,” he says.

The likely early adopters of the product also operate out of San Francisco. “Every hackers’ meet-up is a solid opportunity to pick up early customers,” he says.

In contrast, Dublin has “less than a handful of investors” who have direct experience of successful web ventures, he adds.

Contrast’s core technical team will remain in Dublin, however, due to the easier availability of talent.

“San Francisco companies are hurting even for inexperienced employees,” he says. “Twenty-two year-old web designers get offers of $120,000 (€81,000) salaries plus options and turn them down.”

Contrast, which funds itself through consultancy work, has developed both what Mr McCabe calls “hobby products” such as Qwitter and more “meaningful products” like Exceptional. Qwitter, which was sold last year, had more than 300,000 users for the service which e-mails a notification when a Twitter account is unfollowed. Exceptional tracks and records errors as they occur in websites and is processing a few hundred million errors per month, according to Mr McCabe.

Running these web apps he realised that he knew very little about his users and that relatively speaking “web business owners aren’t very well tuned into our users’ thoughts and desires”.

Intercom addresses that issue by allowing users respond to the messages displayed to them.

Intercom will launch a private test, or beta phase, at LessConf later today.