Scrollback

https://youtu.be/lPHXTEdcmYI

Scrollback is pioneering a new medium: “micro-forums”. We offer the fastest, most frictionless way to build and sustain open communities through text chat. Think Facebook or Google Docs group chat, but embeddable on any website using a single line of HTML code.

 

Micro-forums

An analogy with Twitter will help explain Scrollback.

  • Twitter is a new medium. It transformed blogging into micro-blogging.
  • Blogs allow users to broadcast their thoughts to an audience. Twitter serves the same purpose, but makes the experience lightweight and real-time.
  • Forums allow users to have conversations within a community. Scrollback is a new medium that transforms forums into micro-forums – making them lightweight and real-time. Scrollback will supersede forums just as tweeting has eclipsed blogging.

Micro-forums look and feel similar to group chat. However, unlike Facebook Chat and WhatsApp which are designed for small, private groups of friends, Scrollback is built for large, open communities that need persistent conversations that can be moderated, shared, embedded, browsed and searched.

 

Opportunity

Among all the ways that open online communities can communicate, group text chat is the most engaging. We know this because Internet Relay Chat (IRC), a text chat system that was launched in 1988 and predates the web, has enduring popularity in communities of geeks. Forums and mailing lists – the other tools open communities use – are almost just as old. They have not been updated for the modern, social, mobile web. This is the opportunity.

In the early Internet, only developers and geeks were online all the time. Today, everyone is persistently connected through mobile, and apps like WhatsApp have trained them in mobile chat. Short messages are up and long posts are down. This trend powers Twitter, and will power Scrollback.

 

Team

  • Aravind Ravi Sulekha, 28, has been programming since the age of 12, and first used IRC when he was 14. When not on the computer, he completed a degree in engineering at IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. He has been involved in multiple startups previously; he headed product management and development at a startup that raised a $16MM Series-A from Sequoia and Norwest.
  • Gaurav Srivastava, 30, also attended IIT Kharagpur. In college, he was a founder of one of the largest technology festivals in India and built a successful college startup selling custom t-shirts. He has over seven years of experience in Finance with multiple accreditations, and excels in engaging communities.
    The team includes 3 other developers and uses Agile Development methodologies to iterate quickly.

Media kit

Screenshots
Founder Photos on request

Media Coverage

Building the missing link among current crop of social media platforms: Scrollback
21 MAY 2013 – Economic Times – Indian technology startups prefer foreign companies for global exposure & assured funding (under Scrollback’s previous name, AskAbt)