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PowWow (chat program)

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Powwow was one of the first internet chat programs for windows. It was made by a company called Tribal Voice. This is a quintessential internet startup meltdown story.

The company was founded in 1994 by the software millionaire John McAfee, founder of McAfee Antivirus software and Network Associates. This company made a website that pretended to be a 'native american' company, with all sorts of pages describing themselves as Indians. Tribal Voice was funded by something called the Native American Trust, an organization that seems to have no other meaning than its relation to Tribal Voice. It was also funded by the McAfee Foundation. It was physically located in Woodland Park, Colorado and Scotts Valley, California, both in the USA.

Paula Giese made a website in which she researched the connection between Native American and the Tribal Voice company. She also exchanged emails with McAffee and TV. His flippant replies to her confirmed her ideas about the site and the company. She wrote an editorial discussing the racist nature of much of the tribal voice website, and the flippant attitude of the person running Tribal Voice.

In the late 90s it made a deal with AT&T where AT&T would use Powwow for its worldnet internet customers. By 1998 McAffee was not running it, just sitting on the board. The CEO was now Joseph Esposito, an ex-publishing guy.

It was in a brief battle in the tech bubble of 2000 with AOL who shut off Powwow chat from its AIM chat system, and sued Tribal Voice for use of the phrase 'buddy list'.

In 2000 the company was then bought out by CMGIon, a division of CMGI founded with help from Sun Microsystems and Novell. CMGIon then killed the product in January, 2001.

Principles

John McAfee, CEO, Board Joseph Esposito, CEO Ross Bagully, CEO (later senior VP, instant messenging, CMGI) David Wetherell, CEO CMGion Richard Dym, VP Marketing Nigel Thopmson CTO Beth Nagengast, Director Corporate Marketing Kathy Johnson, Director of Product Marketing

External Links

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