Backed by investor Ram Shriram, Firechat is an application developed by OpenGarden that allows users to communicate when online, as well as when they go off Internet and mobile networks. At present, Firechat is a public chat room. It came into prominence shortly after it launched, when protesters at the Umbrella Revolution student protests in Hong Kong used it to communicate, due to the threat of the Internet being shut down. Once Firechat has a critical mass of people at the same location, it goes "off the grid", connecting one phone to another and creating a mesh network over which messages travel from one user to another. Apart from the famous protests, Firechat has found use at events and music festivals, where WiFi and cellular networks get jammed because of the sheer number of people there. I used it at the NH7 Weekender in Delhi, especially when calls, SMS' and Whatsapp messages weren't going through. It was also used at Burning Man. What's interesting is that, as of October 2014, Firechat had around half a million users in India, making this its second largest country, tied with Hong Kong. Public chat rooms are messy and chatrooms that require many people to be online at the same time at the same place might have limited and transient usage. Still, the potential for an application that goes off the grid and allows you to remain connected to others is potentially a topic for a fascinating, freewheeling conversation on the future of the technology and how it will permeate, as well as the future of…
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“It’s inevitable to go off the grid” – Firechat CMO Christophe Daligault on the off-network future of connectivity
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