PowWow (chat program)

For other uses, see Pow wow (disambiguation).

PowWow was one of the first Internet instant message and chat programs for Windows. It was made by a company called Tribal Voice.^{[citation needed]}

Features

Many of the features found in contemporary instant messaging programs were first introduced in PowWow. The program also had several innovative features such as allowing users to talk with each other using VoIP, a shared whiteboard, a built-in speech synthesizer, WAV sound file playing, offline transmittal of instant messages via POP/SMTP, and the ability for users to 'cruise' to the same web page. It also had built-in file transfer with a simple drag-and-drop interface to make file sharing very easy.^{[citation needed]}

History

The company was founded in Woodland Park, Colorado, United States, North America, at the end of 1994, by the software millionaire John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates (now called McAfee). At first, the company described itself, especially on its web site, as a 'Native American' company run by Native Americans. As the company grew, the Native American references gradually disappeared.^{[citation needed]}

The company eventually located its corporate headquarters in Scotts Valley, California.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1990s, Tribal Voice began to OEM the PowWow software in order to increase market share. While most of these deals were insubstantial, several were with high-profile companies, including AT&T's WorldNet Internet service provider (ISP), search engine/portal AltaVista, and Freeserve, a United Kingdom-based ISP.^{[citation needed]}

PowWow was one of the first instant messaging programs to provide interoperability between multiple instant messaging clients, being compatible with both AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Microsoft's MSN Messenger.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1990s, AOL sued Tribal Voice for use of the phrase 'buddy list' and made repeated efforts to block interoperability between their instant messaging client and Tribal Voice's, as well as those of other companies.^{[citation needed]}

In 1998, original founder McAfee brought in Joseph Esposito, formerly the president and CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, to run the company.^{[citation needed]}

In 1999, the company was acquired by dot-com incubator CMGI, who moved the company's development center from Woodland Park to Colorado Springs, Colorado, closing the Scotts Valley office. In 2000, CMGI merged the company into CMGIon, a division of CMGI, founded with help from Sun Microsystems and Novell. In January 2001, CMGIon closed its Colorado Springs office, the former Tribal Voice.^{[citation needed]}

Principals

(company officers prior to acquisition)

• John McAfee, CEO, Board
• Joseph Esposito, CEO
• Nigel Thompson, CTO [later Chief Architect, CMGion]
• Richard Dym, VP Marketing
• Lee Finck, VP Sales
• Kathy Johnson, Director of Product Marketing
• Beth Nagengast, Director Corporate Marketing

(post-acquisition)

• Ross Bagully, CEO [later senior VP, instant messaging, CMGI]
• Gail Bakewell, VP Operations

(technical management and leads) by last name, in alphabetical order

• Hugh Anderson, Sr. Lead, Client
• Jared Bergeron, Director, IT
• Dave Debenham, Sr. Lead, Server
• Bullitt Fitzhugh, Director, IT
• G.E. 'Rok' Gayles, System Administrator
• Michael Gilardino, Director, Quality Assurance
• Aryeh Goretsky, Director, Support
• Zach Hornbaker, Webmaster
• Ingrid Janse (née Bomgardner), Program Manager
• Christian Karnisky, Director, Operations
• Michael Mansfield, Director, User Relations
• Paul Peterson, Sr. Lead, Client
• Chad Routh, Sr. System Administrator
• Jim Zoromski, Sr. Lead, Database
• Kevin McPherson, Director, Quality Assurance

Bibliography

• Article about Tribal Voice's first step to generate revenue
• "Inside Interactive Travel, story about using PowWow to create online travel communities". Archived from the original on 2006-02-22. Retrieved 2010-04-13. 
• "article about AOL suing Tribal Voice". internetnews.com. 1999. 
• AT&T WorldNet selects PowWow for IM client
• AltaVista selects PowWow for IM client
• "CMGIon acquires Tribal Voice". internetnews.com. 2000. 
• "CMGIon drops PowWow". CNet. 2000. 

External links

• Experimental PowWow server set up by former employees