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!
@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"
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! 😘
@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 :)
@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 :)
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
@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?
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!
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.
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!
@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
@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!)
@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?
@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.
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@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!
@laurenleto I agree. Something more descriptive of the awesomeness inside Listen. Perhaps something more like:
"A shareable phone number with smart controls."
@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.
@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?
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!
@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)
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!
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
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!
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