Case Study: From Doctors to Daters, Userplane's Instant Communicator Puts a Face on IM

By building Flash-based tools that help people build Web communities, Userplane has built itself a business. The Los Angeles-based company's primary product is an Instant Messaging (IM) system that employs Macromedia Flash to add audio and video capabilities to a medium that traditionally has been text-based.

Called Instant Communicator, this IM system gives users the ability to see and hear each other by streaming both audio and video through a Flash MX-based client, creating an online social environment that enables live interaction, while still protecting users' privacy by providing a certain degree of anonymity. It has become the darling of the online dating business and is currently deployed at more than 50 dating sites.

But Userplane sees dating sites as only a small part of its overall market, a market that company president Mike Jones calls "online social networking." Jones believes his streaming media-enhanced Instant Communicator IM is a good fit for this market because "live video and audio significantly enhances a social networking site’s ability to provide a comfortable online environment where people can hang out and get to know one another."

Social networking is a huge market that includes all segments of society, says Jones. And he insists that his IM is a "business-driving tool" that's as appropriate for entrepreneurs looking to forge business alliances as it is for the singles looking to find love connections. One example of Instant Communicator’s business capabilities can be found in the Radiology Department of The Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Clinic is a large urban medical center with many radiologists in different offices spread around a sprawling campus.

"People may not see each other face to face for months," says radiologist Dr. David Piraino, who is coordinating the clinic’s evaluation and testing of the Userplane IM under the direction of radiologist Dr. David Piraino. "We are looking for electronic, non-telephone ways to facilitate communications to make our work more efficient and thus our healthcare services better," says Piraino.