Thanks, @shelkie & @karj! I enjoyed the "chapp" (is that what we're calling it?) this morning. ;)
Some product feedback (some I know is obvious):
1) Speed - it's a little annoying to have to wait for the first message to send before I can even begin typing the next one
2) Click to @mention and Auto-Complete - make it easier for me to reply to specific people in the thread
3) More Personal and "Alive" - it's not clear who's in the room (active or afk) and some visual identifier such as a profile pic, would add more personality/self-expression to the conversation
How are people using the product so far? Any common behavior?
Credit to @riptarion TechCrunch for surfacing this gem.
I was recently looking for a simple web-based chat room and couldn't find any good solutions (cc @FurqanR). On Chapp you can join trending topics or create your own. Naturally, I just created a Product Hunt room. Join me!
P.S. it supports animated GIFs.
It's a little buggy and not nearly as polished as Slack or other more established chat apps, but I like its simplicity. Having a good convo w/ some PH folks now.
Embeddable yet?
How long until I can write a bot?
Would love some design tweaks that allow the conversation to flow a little better.
But, excited that this exists.
How is Leah Culver’s https://grove.io/ going?
agree with @rrhoover, it is a bit buggy and it was fun talking to people on producthunt :) I do like it's simple and I've been looking for something like this to create a chat room fast. I hope it didn't require a registration and allowed anonymous logins.
@karj would love if you took a page out of producthunt's playbook and used oauth for the login so didn't have to create a whole new account just to chat with @rrhoover and co. Was a fun chat!
@pjrvs It's been great having you take part in it from early on—nice to have so many good people trying it out and providing feedback!
@rrhoover We're just really glad you made note of us this morning—and do hope that http://chapp.is/producthunt can be useful to you and your community!
@mark__a Although we've used OAuth in the past, and agree that it can remove some obstacles, it also has its limitations.
First, it necessitates two means of login—because some don't use Twitter. As such email login still needs to be there. This adds clutter to the overall UX, which we're really working to avoid.
Second, notifications are an important part of Chapp, and those are sent via email. So, users need to provide an email address at some point, just so we can direct their messages to them.
Third, I'm often (personally) uncomfortable giving a new app access to my whole Twitter account. As such, I often don't hit the Allow button—because I'm just not sure about the service, yet.
Finally, we look at this as a strategic decision. We don't want to tie Chapp too closely to Twitter, because we like the idea of retaining autonomy. Our belief is that in doing so, we won't get sucked into another company's trajectory—and can instead take full responsibility for our users' needs.
I know I've carried on. It's just that the OAuth (or Facebook account login) question was one we really thought about. I hope all of this makes sense. :-)
Really appreciate you bringing some folks over to Chapp @rrhoover. Let us know if there's anything we can do to make the service better for you and the Product Hunt people.
Not sure what to call sessions yet. That said, if “chapp” becomes the reference for that, we’ll run with it. :-)
Responses to your questions:
1. Speed: This really shouldn’t be an issue—and it definitely won’t be a permanent one. It’s just a matter of one node in the cluster misbehaving. We’re working with the people at Modulus to fix this.
2. Click to @mention and Auto-Complete: This is one of many features that’s on our to-do list.
3. More Personal and “Alive”: Eventually, you’ll see active users highlighted in green on their posts, and a sidebar showing the channel participants sorted by active/inactive, and karma.
We’re pretty happy with how the service has been received, so far. We launched on Monday, and there are over 350 registered users. We have lots work to do, and many changes already underway. That said, we’re happy to see some people becoming active, and visit durations seem to be decent.
Hey @thomasknoll Still very early days for Chapp. We have a lot of ideas for its future, but for now we're focused on building traction and improving the UX. Embedding on other sites would certainly move it toward becoming a platform.
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