Working at home undoubtedly has its advantages – no commute, the flexibility it allows workers to manage their own workday and flow, and of course there’s the hackneyed notion that people who work from home have the luxury of donning pajamas until noon. But kidding aside, individuals who elect to work from home are faced with some degree of loneliness and isolation and lack the in-personal cross-pollination of ideas without the water cooler banter and last-minute cubicle conferences.
At- home worker, meet Sqwiggle.
Sqwiggle is a new social network based on video conferencing in the world of Web-Real Time Communication (Web-RTC). Sqwiggle is different from other Web-RTC software applications and is quickly shaping the world of the how people communicate and engage each other.
Techcrunch’s Greg Kumparak, a home-based writer from California lauds Sqwiggle, saying the browser-based group video chat built with work-from-homers in mind. “It’s got the office-like immediacy that Skype lacks, but without the noise of a Google Hangout,” wrote Kumparak. Sqwiggle says it is different from Skype and Google Hangout which are call-based services with one party needing to call the other, where one has to accept.
Sqwiggle finds the happy medium somewhere between the two. It’s “always-on,” in a sense, but without the background noise or distractions, wrote Kumparak.
“You could Skype each other when needed, but the whole calling process feels archaic and slow. You could sit in a constant Google Hangout, but then you’ve got to deal with the endless roar of everyone’s background noise being mashed up into a symphony of barking dogs, lawn mowers, and coffee shop chatter,” wrote Kumparak.
The growth of Web-RTC and cutting edge video conferencing software is a mirror of trends in today’s at-home workforce. According to Evolution Magazine, the number of Americas working from home jumped 41-percent since 1999 and it will continue to grow as technology continues to evolve.
How does Sqwiggle work? Each company gets their own virtual “workroom” and each member gets a place in a grid of images – which Kumparak humorously compares to a “Brady Bunch-esque grid of heads.” When one is not engaging in a conversation with someone else, you appear as a mere black-and-white still photo that constantly gets updated. To speak to someone, you simply click on their face. Sqwiggle also allows you to talk to several people at once. You just click on their faces, and you’re instantly in a group chat. And if you click on someone who is in the midst of a conversation, you instantly join their chat.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
