Jonathan Cottrell é co-fundador e chefe executivo da Tag Team Interactive, empresa responsável pela criação do Blippr - serviço que mistura rede social e microblog sobre filmes, livros, músicas e jogos. Em entrevista ao Monovolume, ele contou sobre mais sobre sua empresa, sua visão de negócios na web, além de interessantes detalhes sobre seu principal produto.

Segundo Jonathan, o Blippr surgiu de uma simples conversa via IM com seu amigo e parceiro na Tag Team Chris Heald, sobre a idéia de criar um site de micro resenhas.  Seria um modo de facilitar o compartilhamento de opiniões entre seus amigos ou qualquer outra pessoa que fizesse parte da rede.

“Quantas vezes alguém já pediu suas recomendações? Ou quantas vezes você simplesmente quis contar para alguém o que achou daquele filme legal que você viu ou sobre um novo disco?” - JC

Jonathan falou também sobre as principais mudanças no modo de planejar negócios online após a famosa bolha da internet em 1999 até a chegada da Web 2.0.

“A única coisa que pode te impedir de começar um negócio na web hoje é sua própria determinação. Embora, isso não signifique que você vai fazer necessariamente sucesso.” - JC

Confira a entrevista(em inglês) na íntegra:

Who are the guys behind Tag Team Interactive?
Honestly, we’re just a couple of entrepreneurial geeks. We met as freshmen in high school and just happened to stay in touch all these years. I’ve been married a few years, have an 18-month old daughter, and a son due in July. Chris has been married just over a year, too, and he has his first child on the way. I’m a fairly entrepreneurial guy and I’ve had my own businesses since I was 11 years old, when I helped neighbors with various jobs–yard work, house sitting, etc. Chris, on the other hand, has been involved with technology for a lot longer than me. He has been programming since he was 12, way back in 1995. Our interests and skillsets are quite different, but that’s partly what makes us such a great team.

How is the daily work at Tag Team?
Chris is the only member of our team that’s full-time at this point. He works a ton, pulling well over 100 hours a week. By his own admission, it’s a good thing he makes money doing this, because he’d be working on this type of stuff even if he wasn’t making money at it.

I still work an 8-to-5 job, so the only time I can work on Tag Team is when I come home. I usually work until about 2am every morning, but I get together with Chris on the weekends and some weekend nights. Otherwise, we just stay in touch through the days via GTalk and work together that way. It’s not the same as being in the same room together, but it’s still quite effective.

For the first few months, it was all about bringing an initial version of our vision to life, and expanding upon that vision as we worked on blippr. But now we’re really focused on listening to our beta users for blippr and seeing how we can incorporate their feedback into the development of blippr before we launch to a larger audience and open it up to everyone. It’s a lot of work, time wise, but loving what you do makes it possible.

In 1999 at the height of the internet bubble, you believed that the web was a good place to start a business. What about now? Do you have the same opinion?
We wouldn’t be here otherwise. In 1999, when we were 17, we were fascinated by what was happening on the web, and I think we had a good idea about where the web was heading. You might even say that we were using many “web 2.0″ (for lack of a better term) principles in how we built our first website, but ultimately, we just didn’t have the experience or resources to turn our ideas into a business. College and building our careers became more important to us.

Looking at today’s web economy, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s the best place to start a business. Far better a place to start a business than it was in 1999. The barriers to entry are lower than ever when you consider the ever-lowering costs of bandwidth, the tools you have available via APIs and platforms like Facebook, and even how people expect to interact on the web now–that they want, even expect, to contribute to content online. The only thing that could stop you from starting a business on the web today is your own determination. Though, that’s not to say you’ll necessarily be successful.

How did you come up with the idea of having a social network about short reviews?
I can’t really say what incited the idea. It was just something that popped in my head and I threw out as an idea to Chris via IM one Saturday afternoon. It probably went something like, “Hey, what about building a site for really short reviews of books, games, movies, music and TV?” And Chris’s response was along the lines of, “I like it.” It wasn’t in our original plans for Tag Team, but as we worked on the fleshing out the idea, we knew it was something that could be very useful, and it’s something that could work very well as a business. Being a hardcore movie geek myself, I can tell you I’m the biggest fan of blippr, and our vision for it long-term is something I find very exciting.

Why music, books, games, and movies?
Good question. First of all, we should note that television is something coming in the near future. We’ve stuck to these five categories initially because they’re things people are interested in reviewing, and even more so, people are always looking for recommendations about already. How many times have people asked you for a recommendation? Or how many times have you just wanted to tell people about an awesome movie you saw, or great new album? It’s a conversation that’s already happening, and we wanted a way to better facilitate those recommendations and conversations about consumable media online.

However, we can also tell you that blippr has become somewhat of a mini-version of a much grander plan we originally had when starting Tag Team Interactive. What that is we can’t say yet, but it is something to look forward to.

Is 160 characters a good number?
That’s a question we’ve constantly run into from people. As you can read on blippr, we originally started with 160 characters as the max length of blips with mobile SMS features in mind for the future. However, it’s not set in stone, yet. Some people have said 160 characters aren’t enough to relay their true opinions, while others have said they very much enjoy the challenge of writing the perfect, most concise 160 character opinion. You might even say they consider it a game.

We like 160 characters as the max limit for a few reasons. First, it’s really short. People aren’t detered to add a blip because they know it’s going to be fast, unlike other review sites that suggest their review might take a while to add. Second, as we mentioned a moment ago, we like it because it would allow us some SMS features in the future.

We’re definitely willing to increase the limit if it’s something we determine is necessary. It’s just something much easier to increase than it is something we could have decreased. For example, if we had started at 300 characters, then decided to shift to 160, that would have been impossible without destroying much of the content people had already added. We look forward to continued feedback from our users to determine the right character limit. For now, 160 characters is it.

When will new features like mobile technology be available to blippr users?
To this point, we’ve really bootstrapped our business. From the response we’ve received about blippr though, we know it’s something that has long-term viability. But given our limited resources at this point, not until we have raised a Series A fund and received more financial backing can we begin on the mobile side. Currently, our next big feature is a Facebook application, which will be launched within the next month. While it’s certainly not as sexy a feature as a mobile app would be, it’s built with the same goal in mind–that you will be able to use blippr wherever you are, whether that’s on Facebook, MySpace, using RSS, or eventually, on your phone.

Besides blippr and Judge-O-Rama can we expect more kids in the Tag Team family?
Right now, our focus is on honing blippr’s current functionality, building more features within blippr that people are asking for, and making it the best possible user-generated review and recommendations site around. Long-term, we have a big vision for blippr, and what ultimately is a much larger idea established upon the same concepts–that you trust people you know more than any other source. But until we have a bigger team, our focus is on making blippr better.

O Blippr ainda está em versão beta e para participar você pode retirar seu convite clicando aqui! Thanks JC and Cibele Gomes. :)