37signals is a highly influential, privately held web application company based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The firm was co-founded in 1999 by CEO Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Ernest Kim as a web design company with a specific centre on usability, simplicity, and clarity in design and writing. 37signals also produces a popular blog, Signal vs. Noise. Carlos Segura left in 2000 and Ernest Kim left in 2003.

The company is named for the 37 radio telescope signals identified by astronomer Paul Horowitz as potential messages from extraterrestrial intelligence.

History

37signals designed Meetup.com and redesigned sites for customers including Panera Bread and Shopping.com. In 2000, they created the eNormicom website, a satire of the dot-com era. In 2003, 37signals launched a web design service called 37express, where for a set fee ($2500) they would redesign one page on a website in one week.

Also in 2003, 37signals began work on a web application for project management named Basecamp, originally intended for internal use, that took the company in a new direction. Basecamp has since been proceeded by five other web applications. See the products section below for more details.

By mid-2005 the company had moved away from consulting work to focus exclusively on its web applications. Each application has a free limited-feature version, and most have monthly subscription levels with more features. 37signals' interface designs for their products are widely considered to be the gold standard for web-based application design.

The Ruby on Rails web application framework was extracted from the work on Basecamp and released as open source (see Ruby on Rails section below).

On July 20, 2006 the company announced that Jeff Bezos had acquired a minority stake through his personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions.

“Getting Real” Philosophy

37signals promotes an internally-developed Agile software development methodology and philosophy called "Getting Real". Getting Real eschews formal programming methodology and focuses on creating useful alpha software with small teams, then iterating to a simple useful application based, in part, on real-world customer feedback. The company initially expanded without venture capital and advocated the "self-funded startup" approach, although it has since taken investment from Jeff Bezos. 37signals has held seminars about their methods in Chicago and other U.S. cities. The philosophy recommends online advertising (particularly via blogs) instead of expensive standard methods. The company has published works on the philosophy "Getting Real", the company's development philosophy. The company uses Apple computers exclusively and has said it would "never hire someone who doesn't use a Mac".

Workshops

37signals have in the past hosted their own "Getting Real" workshops. Individuals buy tickets and go to the "workshop", where members of the 37signals staff "take you behind the scenes of the development of Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. We'll explain our Getting Real design and development process, our mistakes, our home runs, and the lessons we've learned. Then we'll discuss how you can transfer that knowledge to your own projects." The most recent workshop happened on October 9, 2006. The "Getting Real" workshop contains material from a prior 37signals workshop called "The Building of Basecamp", which it replaced.

Infrastructure

Ruby on Rails

Main article: Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework created by David Heinemeier Hansson, one of the 37signals programmers. It was originally used to make 37signals' first product, Basecamp, and was since extracted and released as open source in 2004, as well as being the framework that 37signals use to make their web applications. Often shortened to Rails or RoR, it is programmed in the Ruby programming language.

On the official Ruby on Rails website, it states in the footer of the page that it is "sponsored by 37signals". The development of Ruby on Rails is now managed by the Rails Core Team, with Hansson still contributing.

Queen Bee

Queen Bee is 37signals' custom internal statistics, billing, and administration application, based around centralization.

Website

Blogs

Signal vs. Noise

The company's web log, Signal vs. Noise, was launched in 1999 and is self-described as featuring "entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more." It is regularly updated by the company's employees and allows commenting by readers. The company often uses the blog to communicate with users regarding new products, features, and their design philosophy Getting Real. Everything since February 2005 is archived, and the blog is powered by a custom-built blogging tool, although it formerly used Movable Type. The content posted is often critical and controversial, and often hotly debated in the comments. The blog is written in a casual style, and sometimes contains profanity. Revenue from the blog is gained through three doses of advertising: small image ads via The Deck, a small advertising network, and a 37signals Job Board and Gig Board, the former advertising full time positions and the latter one-off projects or 'Gigs'. (See below: Advertising)

Product Blog

The company also maintains another blog, the “37signals Product Blog”. It launched on May 15, 2007, and is self-described as “News, talk, opinions, tips and tricks about our entire product line”. It will replace the individual blogs for Basecamp and Backpack.

Developerland

The company's website also has a section called "Developerland", self-described as "APIs, example, wrappers, forums, and everything else you need to integrate with 37signals products".

Books

Defensive Design for the Web : How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points, New Riders Press, 2004 ISBN 0-7357-1410-X

Getting Real, self-published e-book, 2006. 37signals has stated the book has generated over $300,000 in revenue.

Products

As of March 2007, 37signals has created four commercial web applications and two free web applications. All of the 37signals web applications use a page-based design (i.e. the application has a multi-page navigation and acts like a normal web site would), as opposed to the window-based interface of so-called "web desktops" such as YouOS. With the exception of Writeboard, all of the 37signals applications use the Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality of JavaScript.

All of the 37signals applications have feature-limited free versions, and 30-day free trials of the full versions, after which the user must either pay to continue or stop using the application.

Basecamp

Main article: Basecamp (software)

Basecamp is a web-based project management tool, and 37signals' first product, launched in 2004. The Ruby on Rails framework was extracted from the Basecamp project.

The primary features of Basecamp include to-do lists, milestone management, forum-like messaging, file sharing and time tracking.

37signals have since created an API for Basecamp, allowing interaction with other web applications as well as desktop applications. One example of the API in use is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget.

Ta-Da List

Ta-Da List is a free to-do list application, and 37signals' first free web application, launched in January 2005. To use the application, one must create an account which will manage all of their "to-do lists". It is possible to track changes via an RSS feed. Ta-Da List allows lists to be shared either publicly (anyone can view the list by visiting a unique URI), or with specific people by sending an automated email containing a private URI. Ta-Da List is based both on the lists in both Basecamp and Backpack. The application uses Google AdSense to make revenue.

Backpack

Backpack is a web-based personal information manager. The application has two main functions: user-created pages that can include text, images, and files etc., and an iCalendar format calendar.

The main features of the user-created pages include to-do lists, inline photo galleries, notes & file attachments, and page sharing. The main features of the calendar include support for iCalendar, email/SMS reminders, color-coding of calendars, and iCalendar sharing.

Writeboard

Writeboard is a free collaborative (but not real time) text editor, which allows creation of an unlimited number of web-based text documents. Each Writeboard has a separate user name and password, and changes can be monitored via an RSS feed.

Writeboard is a very simple application but supports Diff, allowing users to compare changes made to the document. Writeboard has since been integrated with both Basecamp and Backpack.

Campfire

Campfire is a web-based, business-oriented online chat service. Currently the company's second newest product, it was released on 16 February 2006 . The application uses Ajax technology for real time communication, and supports optional 128-bit SSL encryption. To use the application, one must either create a new chat room or be invited to one. Unless a chat room is specifically chosen to be "off the record", browsable transcripts of chat and uploaded files are stored for future reference. One of the main features of the application, referred to by 37signals as "live image previews", is that when one uploads an image file which is either in GIF, PNG, or JPEG format a thumbnail will automatically be shown in the chat.

Highrise

Highrise (originally publicized as Sunrise) is a web-based application focusing mainly on "shared contact management" and basic CRM tasks. The application is the company's most recently released product, released on March 20, 2007.

The main features of Highrise include "Person pages" and "Company pages", that can contain images, notes, company info, contact details, etc., to-do lists much like those seen in Basecamp or Backpack, and "Cases", which are pages/categories within which related notes, images, and people can be kept. The other main features of Highrise are its support for interaction via e-mail (e.g. related email messages can be sent to unique Highrise "dropboxes" via (Blind) carbon copy or email forwarding), and support for importing data from vCards, Microsoft Outlook, ACT!, or data from Basecamp accounts.

The 37signals “Open Bar”

From June 25, 2007, 37signals' Basecamp application has offered a single sign-on authentication option to users using the OpenID authentication service. Since then, both Highrise and Backpack have had OpenID/Open Bar support added. “Open Bar”, effectively an OpenID implementation, is set up by the user logging into their Basecamp/Backpack/Highrise account and entering their unique OpenID identification URI in their account settings. If a user with multiple accounts were to do this, when logged in to any of the accounts configured with OpenID, a black "Open Bar" would appear at the top of the page, and by hovering over the product name a drop-down list of all the user's accounts on that product would appear. Also, if the user has OpenID configured on both their Basecamp, Highrise and/or Backpack accounts, both product names will appear in the Open Bar and allow switching between applications without having to be logged in to each one individually. Open Bar support was added to Backpack on July 27, 2007, but has yet to be officially announced on the company's website.

Advertising

Whilst not primarily an online advertising company, 37signals is the creator and maintainer of two advertising systems, the 37signals "Job Board" and 37signals "Gig Board". The company is a founding member of "The Deck", a small online advertising network with 19 members (as of August 2007).

37signals often advertises its products on The Deck, and occasional job positions on the Job Board.