A Night with Hot Potato

Twitter’s explosive growth and the iPhone app store have spawned a fresh batch of real-time data services. Many brilliant minds are searching for sustainable business models in the segment. Last night I tested out one of the most promising new players, Hot Potato.

The startup enables real-time, curated chats around live events. Users can create a discussion thread, either public or private, focused on a game, concert, conference, etc. Users can announce their participation to friends via Twitter and Facebook, then post text, photos, and videos, comment on individual posts or “like” them, view other participants’ profiles, and track “hot” posts.

I accessed Hot Potato via my laptop, as Apple has the iPhone app in review purgatory.  I joined a discussion around the Patriots-Saints game. Per the image above, the Pats forced me to abandon the chat for the first ever Hot Potato Gossip Girl discussion, launched by Jon Steinberg, in what was no doubt an historic moment for the series.

The service was raw but has significant potential for both users and advertisers. Real-time user generated content faces multiple challenges, from information overload, to lack of editorial control, to accessibility.  The confluence of Hot Potato’s capabilities addressing these issues could make it a winner.

Curation is the key to addressing both information overload and editorial control.  There is an abundance of chat-based options around live events, but they’re typically overrun with blowhards like myself that will make insane claims about Brady Quinn’s ability to throw deep, or Shaq’s athleticism. This idiocy is half the fun, but the ability to mute the idiots when appropriate makes the experience more engaging.  Hot Potato will allow you to focus on posts contributed by your friends or from strangers that are generating the most interest amongst participants.

Accessibility is addressed via smartphone apps, which allow users at the live event to share near-time, personal thoughts and visuals with viewers watching from home, bringing them closer to the real experience.

As an aside, I must say that despite all the complaints about the iPhone app store, it was the first, quasi-open platform with a critical mass of distributed handsets. Before its deployment, app developers had to break through with carriers, which is a Herculean task for any startup.  Luckily the success of the iPhone is leading to more initiatives like the Blackberry app store and Joint Innovation Lab, an open mobile services platform launched by SoftBank Corp (disclosure: SoftBank Capital is an affiliate), China Mobile, Verizon, and Vodafone, which will address their 1 Billion aggregate customers.

Getting back to Hot Potato, I think the site has significant commercial potential for highly targeted, sponsored chats, if it can provide moderation tools such as filtering of foul language (which I was guilty of during the Pats performance last night) and offensive imagery.  The inevitable deluge of spam will also need to be controlled, but users should be able to help police spam in real-time.

I look forward to tracking the progress of Hot Potato and other emerging players in the world of real-time data.  Hot Potato’s iPhone app, which reportedly has superior functionality to the desktop version, is expecting an imminent release.  You can be the first to know by signing up at their homepage.