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Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

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Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#21

Post by twentysix »

lars wrote: post #10

I like this idea, but here's a word of warning: ICQ actually had software that did this about a hundred years ago. It was a stand alone app you would download, and you could chat with people viewing whatever webpage you were on. And I remember running into another person exactly once on this service, and that was while visiting altavista.com (this was before google). And this was from a company that presumably had a…

This could be a good idea if its implemented similar to disqus but used for chatting.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#22

Post by dazbradbury »

At first, my thoughts were wow, that's simple and potentially really powerful.

Then I opened it up.. and even on HN, the chat was a hard to follow trail of throw away comments. Chat is simply an extremely hard thing to moderate and present cleanly. Comments work, because most of the time, insightful/helpful comments are voted to the top.

The way I see it is that chat is useful in a number of scenarios but I'm not sure this is it. I would suggest it's much more useful when:

1) You know the other people in the room, and it's not anonymous. If facebook were behind this, it may be useful, but the probability of someone you know browsing the same page as you is slim. It could work if it used 2 or 3 degrees of seperation however.

2) Liveness is key. Take olark for example, live and direct chat to customer service is extrmely useful. Alternatively, if you are covering a live event, it's much better to have live chat. Even if it's hard to follow at times, at least you know everything is current.

Excellent use of a bookmarklet, and thanks for sharing, but it's going to be very difficult to make it usable.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#25

Post by jamesu »

There are just too many websites around for this to be useful. Not to mention if i go on a website, the last thing i am going to be thinking about is chatting with other people who happen to also be browsing it.

Also the logistics of moderating a potentially infinite amount of chat rooms for every website on the internet are mind boggling to say the least.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#26

Post by vlod »

This was interesting and pretty cool MVP. I provided a whole bunch of suggestions. However it wasn't long before it degenerated into a cesspool.

I really don't understand how people have time to waste in uttering such bollocks into the chat.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#27

Post by jachwe »

bdr wrote: post #24

This has been tried a dozen times. The chicken and egg problem is especially hard in real time. And in general, chat is dead. It's boring. The web has more to offer than it did when chat rooms were popular.

Chat is NOT dead. See campfire for example which even is a quite new chat tool. In fact, entire companies (including my own) are using chat for all their internal communication and were doing this for years. Maybe the anonym chatroom for teenager in the 90s is dead, but that is for good reason. The Chat as a tool itself is still really powerful and effective. (and widely used)

The implementation of rabblr also is really cool. But i think the part with the anonymous users might be a problem. I just logged in for a few minutes and it was full of trolling. Also that you can't carry the chat over multiple pages is anoying, but there might be a way around that. Plus i really don't want to talk to random people on webpages. I probably want to talk to someone who can give me an information that i want, which would be a site adminstrator or company staff or whatever. Like olark. Or i want to talk to my friends or people i know, but i can do that on any IM that i got open anyway.

So to sum it up. Nicely done, but i also doubt the usefulness of this tool.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#28

Post by alaskamiller »

jachwe wrote: post #27
bdr wrote: post #24

This has been tried a dozen times. The chicken and egg problem is especially hard in real time. And in general, chat is dead. It's boring. The web has more to offer than it did when chat rooms were popular.

Chat is NOT dead. See campfire for example which even is a quite new chat tool. In fact, entire companies (including my own) are using chat for all their internal communication and were doing this for years. Maybe the anonym chatroom for teenager in the 90s is dead, but that is for good reason. The Chat as a tool itself is still really powerful and effective. (and widely used) The implementation of rabblr also is rea…

If you run a business, skype

If you run a team, campfire

If you're whiz kid running a team, hipchat

If you work, gchat

If you're a kid, facebook

If you're old, yahoo

If you're a nitwit, twitter

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#29

Post by bdr »

jachwe wrote: post #27
bdr wrote: post #24

This has been tried a dozen times. The chicken and egg problem is especially hard in real time. And in general, chat is dead. It's boring. The web has more to offer than it did when chat rooms were popular.

Chat is NOT dead. See campfire for example which even is a quite new chat tool. In fact, entire companies (including my own) are using chat for all their internal communication and were doing this for years. Maybe the anonym chatroom for teenager in the 90s is dead, but that is for good reason. The Chat as a tool itself is still really powerful and effective. (and widely used) The implementation of rabblr also is rea…

Hence the "in general". It still has its place for internal company tools. I often use IRC for technical help. Still, chat as we knew it, as some people still think of it, is dead.

Re: Show HN: Chat with HN users while you visit HN

#30

Post by jamest »

alpb wrote: post #3

I remember a very similar startup that was doing more or less the same thing which has been a very popular in HN and some other websites, I just could not recall the name. Anyone remembers? edit: It could be envo.lv http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2756145

Founder of Envolve here; yes, we did build a version of Envolve for HN called envo.lv

It was always intended to be a marketing gimmick. The critical mass required to sustain good conversation only lasted for the time the story was on the front page.

Getting a website owner to install a chat system, (rather than just having an overlay) combined with integrating with site credentials will make an on-site chat system significantly more viable.

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