Lauren Leto

Listen - A smart phone number

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Lauren Leto
Hi Product Hunt-ers, I’ve spent the last eight years working on text and voice products. We launched Listen today, our solution to the many ways our current phone numbers fail us. I hope you get as excited as I am when you try Listen. Thanks!
Neekunj
will there be international launch? i an based in india so will it support indian numbers in near future?
Lauren Leto
@neekunjnshah We hope!
Soufian Malih
@laurenleto fantastic! Can you please add one feature that everyday i wish my phone had?: Status. Basically I'll set my status to "meeting", for example, so that incoming calls from my inner circle receive an auto-responder, kind of "Soufian is in a meeting"
Lauren Leto
@malihsoufian Yup! That's how auto-response works–we've been thinking about renaming it to 'Busy mode' though–status is also good!
Lauren Leto
@malihsoufian Oooo but I like that inner circle twist...GREAT idea
Ryan Hoover
Texting or calling a traditional phone number is still the best way to get in touch with someone (if you know their number) but it's still trapped in old tech. Love the idea of wrapping a phone number within an app to give people more control and features, but continue to support traditional means of communication for those that don't have the app (yet). Here's my number: 541-236-9102. Text me! 😘
Lauren Leto
@rrhoover woo! good insight. text ya later :)
Ryan Hoover
@laurenleto LOVE the auto-response feature. When will group texting be supported?
Parker Woodward
@rrhoover Your crazy for posting your number... Good thing Listen has auto-response When will it have call block for spam calls??!!!
Lauren Leto
@parkerwoodward @rrhoover If you use Listen we have a default setting where contacts ring your phone 'like normal' (read: full screen) and people who are NOT in your contact book ring your phone as push notifications. So spam calls are in no way as intrusive when you're on your phone–plus you can mute them afterward and never see a call from that number again :)
Parker Woodward
@laurenleto That's cool...just hard to ignore all the robo calls, you can mute 1,000 and still get just as many calls, would be nice to mute one and then label as a robo call so other Listen users would benefit...food for thought :)
Hal Gottfried
There's really not a whole lot of details on the site, the app page or here for that matter. It sounds like several other tools on the market. Maybe you can explain a bit about it
austenito
Hi @hgottfried. Thanks for checking us out. Lauren wrote a blog post that will hopefully shine some light on why we built Listen. https://medium.com/@laurenleto/l...
Brian Sutorius
Nice TLDR at the end there. Listen looks nicer than GV or Burner, happy to try it out!
Lauren Leto
@bsuto thanks!
Lauren Leto
@hgottfried hey! yep, one of hardest things about explaining Listen to new users is that it *sounds* like other products. but what we're really doing is redefining what it means to be a phone number. everyone who builds a phone service builds voice with a set of expected behaviors and we believe some of those expected behaviors are wrong. that's why we let you disable voicemail or mute a contact or receive calls as push notifications. a lot of people don't like phone calls so why shove calls in their face? if we *have* to have a phone number for things like; making a doctor appointment, calling a loved one, receiving verification texts for login-why not try to make it behave better and give users more control?
Joe Anderson
@laurenleto would love those kinds of examples on that homepage. Common uses cases / problems would help make it click, much quicker. Great job!
Cam Hunt
I've spent the last year working on this. I'm so incredibly proud of the work we have done. I'm so lucky to work with Lauren and Austen, and I'm so excited for the future of Listen. My Listen number is (503) 360-9780. Text me!
Joel Wish
This is so dope. Have thought for years this should exist and finally someone made it. Looks beautiful too!
Lauren Leto
@joelwish Thanks! Most of our design work has been done by @camh–he's a triple threat: iOS, design, +drinking :)
Eric Friedman
Working alongside the Listen team for the past 6 months, I am very excited for today's launch. I put my Listen # on my biz card and the idea of managing a phone number like a social stream makes a lot more sense in 2016 than the traditional carrier way that acts like a pop up when your phone rings.
Lauren Leto
@ericfriedman thanks, E ROCK
G G
Edit - looks more of a Google Voice replacement. Have two iPhones and several Androids with SIM cards. Having one number that rings multiple phones and receives texts/mms would be golden. Nice!
Cam Hunt
@androidlove We don't have an Android app *yet*, but Listen will work on multiple iPhones!
Lauren Leto
@androidlove hey! we receive texts/MMS and can ring multiple phones provided app is downloaded on all those phones (but not yet on android, sadly). we are a full-featured phone service, we just put texts/calls into our app instead of dumping them into your iMessage/android text app
G G
@laurenleto Just installed it and will try it out, so grateful you guys a tacking the Google Voice void. Any MMS support to multiple numbers coming???
elliot grossbard
Would be great to have in Android.
Lauren Leto
@elliot_grossbard And we'll get to you ASAP!
Matthew Straub
What kind of encryption and privacy features are built in? Encryption is one of the best features of iMessages.
Lauren Leto
@matthewmagellan We completely agree. We actually are leaning towards end-to-end instead of iMessage's asymmetrical encryption but would love to hear argument otherwise. We built this version with expectation that most early users would be talking to people who WERENT using Listen. Now that we've launched, we're going to be building Listen user to Listen user features. (Including encryption!)
Justin Bauer
@laurenleto to build on this, when we live in an age of a paranoid internet from spying, how can you ease the mind of people essentially sending all of their data through you? Are people's phone calls passed through? How does this work for the non-techy and can they feel safe?
Lauren Leto
@bauermetal hi! answered below and can't link but: Data is transferred to and from the client with TLS. Our database is encrypted at rest by using AES-256, block-level storage encryption. Keys are managed by Amazon, the individual volume keys are stable for the lifetime of the volume. All calls, texts, and media are deleted from Twilio via their Delete API see https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014... BUT unfortunately we can't ensure security of SMS because it travels through many other companies. We can't change that. Phone numbers as a system have historically been unsafe and carriers are a main reason for that in many ways, including this most disgusting way: http://www.thedailybeast.com/art... I left ATT and ported my # to Listen However, we plan to build end-to-end encryption for users who are talking to other Listen users. ----------
Justin Bauer
@laurenleto Thanks for the quick reply! I'm looking forward to trying the product as well as E2E Encryption in the future!
Lauren Leto
@bauermetal thanks! we look forward to having you. :)
Amrith
Caption says nothing to me :/
Cam Hunt
@ambonium Sorry, what caption?
Lauren Leto
@ambonium hi! good feedback. i assume you mean the tagline, "a smart phone number"? Does "a better Google Voice" make more sense to you? basically, we want to convey that we're a full-featured phone service that acts more like how a phone number *should* act nowadays. Google Voice was a great product which sadly hasn't been updated in a LONG time. so we built our own. would love your feedback!
@DEXIGENT
@laurenleto I agree. Something more descriptive of the awesomeness inside Listen. Perhaps something more like: "A shareable phone number with smart controls."
jeff!
i thought the icon was a guy with a really long nose...
Lauren Leto
@the_real_jw yeah, his name is pat and he's an odd looking elephant but we love him anyways
Adam DePasqua
i like this.
Lauren Leto
@adamdepasqua We like you!
Sammy Schuckert
Awesome! Excited to try this. Will it be available from Europe? :)
Lauren Leto
@sammyschuckert I hope we can get there within year or sooner–I don't have as much knowledge around Eur telecom as I do US but if you guys want it, we'll get there.
Sammy Schuckert
@laurenleto Looking forward!
Jason Shultz
No Android version makes me a sad panda.
lbrkr
Only for the US? Would whoever hunts apps please try and state this it'd save us some time . Thanks
Cam Hunt
@lbrkr Yes, it's US-only at this time, sorry!
lbrkr
@camh Thats ok. I just wish it was flagged up before I downloaded that app. I presume it's a nightmare not worth entering to make it available to the UK?
Greg Hodson
@lbrkr @camh definitely want to know the answer to this. Do we have a UK equivalent? I need this sort of service in my life.
David Lumm
@lbrkr @camh If they're using Twilio as the back-end is should be very easy to transfer it to anywhere that Twilio works, including the UK.
bryan s arnold
I think this is legit awesome! Love the concept and love the design. I believe I'll be using this right away! Really shocked it's not upvoted more today. Just Brilliant!
Warren Sturt
@laurenleto cool app. deleting or editing messages similar to slack on the roadmap at some point?
Lauren Leto
@warrenalfred Definitely–the next few updates will focus more on Listen-to-Listen features such as that. For version 1, we wanted to focus only on features that worked for Listeners users talking to people who weren't Listen users (since we knew that'd be main scenario at launch)
Roberto Sanabria
Very glad to see a team taking on G Voice with a passionate interest on redefining the phone number experience. More innovation in this space is a great thing!
Lauren Leto
@crrob Thanks, Roberto!
Hussein Yahfoufi
Looks great! I've been using Google Voice since day 1 and it still works like it did back then, seems like Google forgot the thing even exists! My number: 858-346-5195
James R.
As a journalist this is FANTASTIC. I have a Google Voice but it's clunky and the crossover with Hangouts gets weird after a while. Some people don't even trust my GV number. Now I've got a real number I can give out to contacts/sources that doesn't confuse with personal calls. Super cool!