Warning: Unusually mean stuff coming. Do you remember the ajax chat plug-in for blogs that launched a year ago February called 3Bubbles?  I didn’t think so; unless you watch every new app closely or follow the work of old school advisor types, you probably couldn’t have cared less over the last year about 3Bubbles. “3bubbles is going to be wildly popular with bloggers,” Michael Arrington wrote in his review when the company launched.  Wrong!  Though Arrington’s pied piper blog post led 40 other bloggers to link to his review, 3Bubbles today looks like a cold fish.  The company’s blog, linked to on the front page, hasn’t been updated in 9 months!  That’s slower than TechCrunch posts in the morning!  They didn’t even post about John Edwards using the service, though there’s a badge on the front page.  John Edwards uses such an excessive number of Web 2.0 apps that if yours is on the list – odds are it’s not going anywhere.

Arrington was concerned that 3Bubbles might not be able to handle the massive traffic influx headed its way.  He forgot to mention in the post that that traffic was likely to be dispersed across Mebo, Gabbly, InCircles, GeeSee and goodness knows how many other services just like this that launched in 2006!  Man oh man did that guy give me a hard time when I worked for him if I gushed about someone without mentioning any competitors! Maybe he was just got distracted by all the players and lost his head in enthusiasm!  

Why the hostility? TechCrunch is holding a contest calling people to mock the site about how how wrong it’s been about a review or market forecast.  I’m still embarrassed about falling for the April Fool’s joke – so in love and respect, I thought I’d oblige! What did 3Bubbles do to deserve this mean spirited post? Nothing, really. As someone working at a company staring into the startup abyss, I shouldn’t be so nasty. There’s just no other way to participate in the contest! What kind of blog runs a contest like that?