What is Dabble.in? [Updated]
This morning, Twitter was awash with messages reading: “I just reserved my Dabble.in username. Gets yours here.” My friend Burt Lum posted the first tweet I saw, and as an obsessive signer-upper, I raced over to register. My post sparked another half a dozen of my friends to sign up and tweet as well.
But many also asked, “What is Dabble?”
After all, the website has no about page, no contact information, and no privacy policy. It was clear from a Twitter search that easily hundreds of people had visited the site, entered their email address, and solicited all their contacts to do the same in the hopes of getting early access. But no one seemed to have any idea what Dabble did.
I checked the WHOIS record for the domain, and saw it was registered to London-based developer Ben Matthew Reyes. A search on Twitter turned up an active account at @3en. And a recent post confirmed that he was helping people with their Dabble signups.
I mentioned him in a tweet, and he responded with his email address. And he was kind enough to help provide an answer to a question that we all probably should have asked before signing up.
Reyes says the site’s tagline is: “Dabble is a place to document and share what [you’re] working on, your Dabbles.” I did find a working Dabble profile page, and at first glance, it looked like a design sharing site like Dribbble or Forrst. I asked Reyes if the comparison was fair, and he was quick to say that Dabble is still a work in progress.
“We really don’t want to define Dabble too much early on as we want to see where the community takes it, almost like how Twitter took off and the users invented the @reply, #Hashtags, etc.,” he says.
He also didn’t expect anyone to sign up just yet.
“We’re still working on the beta,” he explains. “The landing page recently leaked to Twitter and took off, which we couldn’t stop.”
With all the sudden attention, though, he quickly released a promotional video on Vimeo. As in, posted moments ago:
It’s definitely reassuring to know who is behind Dabble, and that there’s a genuine service planned. But it was also telling to see how many people, including myself, were happy to jump in and promote it without having any information. Even IÂ wondered if Dabble might just be a geeky sociology experiment. If it had been a hoax, I’d easily fallen for it.
Only two weeks ago, another stealth startup’s viral invite system prompted many people to think it was a giant scam.
Many people signed up for Dabble largely based on the slick look of the site’s main page.
“We plan on putting the same amount of attention and detail to the landing page to every single feature we create,” Reyes promises.
Update (11:49 HST): Link and screenshot redacted by request, video added.
Hi Ryan,
Thank you very much for clarifying a little about Dabble. I was curious when I saw your tweet but wanted to know more about it.
I guess it’s a bit of wait-and-see at this point, but it sounds intriguing.
I know it isn’t the case here, because it wasn’t ready for a beta launch, but I am amazed at the number of times I see a new product that wants me to sign up without any background or info on their service, but they want my background info.
Thanks again!
Keep us updated!
Janine
Dabble seems like a novel idea… and it may resonate with enthusiast groups and such, as it will allow them to find others with similar interests. I don’t know if it’ll have the same broad appeal of a service like Twitter, though.
an unintentional target group for Dabble might be people who “dabble” in “adult activities”, though.
95% of why I pay attention to you and Burt is so you can experience the catastrophes before I have to. If you two are the tip of the spear, I don’t mind being whatever you call that area right behind the tip of the spear. It means your Twitterversary’s a couple of days earlier than mine, which I admit annoys me a little, but it also means I generally avoid the mad rush for early sign-up on undefined services AND the mass, apologetic, OOPS-don’t-click-that-link-it’s-a-scam messages.
That video’s still not very clear, but at least the whole thing looks legit.
Alright, I just “reserved my spot.” I don’t know what a Dribbble or Forrst site is either so this whole thing is very vague to me. I’ll be waiting for more details in my inbox. Hopefully soon.
I saw someone say they registered, then went to site and saw no info about it. Googled it and found your post. Thanks for clarifying! It’s amazing that people sign up without knowing what it is. Maybe even more amazing is that the developers aren’t even sure. Good thing you’re here to fill us in.
Well I reserved my spot. Thanks for filling us in. I did mine because of @Hawaii I figured if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me :)
Thanks for the info, Ryan. I saw the tweet but had no idea what ‘Dabble’ was/is so I didn’t sign up yet. It seems like an interesting concept, hopefully they’ll be able to deliver with proper execution (that’s where so many great ideas go wrong).