One chat app for all your chats?
I keep forgetting where I had a specific conversation and besides, it's quite tedious to keep switching between multiple chat apps.
I want to talk to a person and easily reach out where we're connected. If that's messenger that's what comes up. If we're connected on linkedIn and messenger then I can switch easily between these.
The app syncs some/most/all chats from all linked services and you can freely chat from one single place.
What do you think? Any ideas, raw thoughts, criticism is very much welcomed! I can take it all!
I've put up a survey as well if you have 2 min, I promise to give you lifetime for free if you leave your email at the end: https://smoothie.chat/smoothie-chat-survey/
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Did the survey! Hope it helps, as for the idea; I think the idea is great, but there is a lot of fierce competition. It's a hard ball to get rolling but once it does it keeps going. I found a few competitors, maybe you could check how they did it?
Good luck! Could you also feedback my idea? Thanks! https://www.indiehackers.com/post/validation-a-wireless-time-machine-backup-saas-3e3555e130
I only had Franz in my list of competitors. Thank you for sharing those!! Yeah it's a challenging market I'm sure and we really need to bring 10x to get some attention. Just want to find a very useful narrow niche. Thanks for your submission as well! Will surely check out your post 🧡
Happy to hear! Good luck and thanks again for checking my post, means a lot.
I just filled out your survey. I agree with others, I’m burnt out on chat apps also. If you were going for super minimalistic and have a client for Desktop and Mobile, I’d be interested. Although, I think one of the major problems you may run into is, a lot of these apps have closed APIs or rate-limited.
Yep, actually most of them have closed API for chatting. And there's too many chats.
Super minimalistic - very well said. Definitely something I'll add to my vision.
For APIs, I'll do what franz does: a webview but adjust it a bit by removing unnecessary parts and leaving only the chat with current person, the highlighted part in this screenshot is a screenshot from Messenger but with parts removed: https://share.getcloudapp.com/04uPDze7
This way I don't need to use their API or rebuild the chat experience.
I think this is a great idea @filipluch. Getting everything in one place would be really neat. I have seen this app called https://meetfranz.com/ in the past. Is this along the same lines as what you are thinking?
Thank you for your support Gordon 🧡
yeah Franz is where I started a few years ago, the main inspiration.
But the thing is that with all these chats like franz (shift, rambox, station etc) you select a platform then find the person you want to talk to.
What I'm trying to do is: select a person -> chat. That's it. Like in the screenshot from the post.
So if you have a conversation with a friend on whatsapp and a conversation on messenger with another friend, you have them next to each other, no need to switch context/platform. Allows you to think of who you chat with, not where. You'll soon don't mind what the other person uses.
Ah okay that sounds great. I think it will be interesting to see this shift take place on a macro scale too....where something like a digital identity might allow you to interact with anyone else without the care of what platform is used to execute the message. I look forward to seeing your progress in future. :)
I filled out your survey.., however, I'm kind of burned out on chat apps. It might just me personally, but I feel like everyone is trying to do a chat app right now. Maybe you can create a great unifying chat application, but it's going to be hard for me to switch to it.
I'm not trying to diminish your work. I get how hard it can be and I'm just one person. I genuinely hope every person on here is successful. I love supporting indie hackers over large corporations. Let me know if I can help in some way!
Very much appreciate the sincerity!
Regarding burnout on chat apps: totally with you on this. There's 10+ apps I have to use and I feels like maybe a bit too much sometimes. A sound pops up and I have no clue which one is that.. and yeah, I'm trying to unify them, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about it and tried to put them together.
But I believe there is a simple yet valuable shortcut for people to use different chats like one chat. And the switching - we'd import your chats so shouldn't be much friction, though there is always friction when changing people's habits.
In regards to diminishing my work - not a single bit! Valid arguments on why it wouldn't work either makes the product better or kills it. And if it dies from an argument then it wasn't even meant to become something real. So keep it coming! 🤗
If you are looking for the secure chat solution, here major searches end with the MirrorFly software. This chat app builds with updated features to make videos with highly comfortable and simple to make use.
If you want further details, let you see : https://bit.ly/3juVdUv
I actually I had the same Idea, then I saw the competition, and free products that do the same and I just threw the towel.
hah valid point. Do you happen to have a list of those? besides the usual free chats that don't integrate with other chats.
I have these on my list: Shift, Station, All in one Messenger, Franz, Rambox and a few mentioned above (GroupMe, Disa, IM+, Snowball).
Actually Franz was the one that demotivated me, it is free and has tons of integrations, writing all those integrations with thousands of providers is tedious and boring work. My idea was to combine chat/email in the same platform seems like its already done in franz. Maybe there are some gaps and you can succeed, what do you plan on improving?
So imagine I chat with you on whatsapp and with another friend on messenger. I'm done switching between tabs or apps to chat to another person. Since I have 2 active conversations I see you then I see my other friend right below you. And when I click on a person I can switch between platforms, but the last one would be the default.
Also helps sooo much when chatting with 5-10 people a day and having them one after another regardless of the platform.
Imagine going to linkedIn -> messeges -> click that person: chat. Then switch to messenger -> find a person -> chat.
What I want to do is: search person or find in recent -> chat on whichever platform we've been chatting until now.
How do you feel about this gap?
Seems a nice feature to me! I've seen your landing page seems really nice!
Question, I've seend that you integrated with 86 chat services? Have you coded all the integrations yourself? if so, wow... What a painful work
hah not yet but that's the plan. We're now focusing on top 10 chats.
But regardless, we plan on integrating will all available chat platforms. It's not that painful, more like a lot of fun :D
Question, is this for personal or business?
I believe it should be for business but also applicable for personal. Since I don't believe it will be valuable enough or a game changer for those using it for personal use like chatting with few friends.
Why? do you have any thoughts on one of the use cases?
Well for personal, I don’t believe anyone would pay for it because consumers aren’t really trying to optimize messaging. For business, I know there is stuff like Front or even Hootsuite where you can aggregate the messages. Check out all the competition and figure out if there is a gap.
Very valid point in regards to personal use.
Omg I couldn't find anything like Front or Hootsuite until now. Thank you!! They do have some kind of unifying chatting and that's very similar though very limited. That's because no chat will open their API. So I'm trying to just use a webview for chats like this(most of them) which will allow me to integrate with all of them not only pages or limited platforms. But knowing there is something at least somehow similar is so valuable! Thank you so much again 🧡@roddanan