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Wavelength

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Re: Wavelength

#81

Post by zapt02 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #16

Given its place in the orbit of tastemaker-market, iOS-exclusive apps, I expected Wavelength to require a paid subscription for access. I was surprised to see that the developers plan a freemium model. Of course, a paid-only model would put a hard ceiling on the total addressable market, but they have an interesting challenge ahead in finding something that a sustainable number of users will want to pay for.

This app is dead in the water. That doesn't mean it's not gonna provide some usefulness to groups of people, just that a iOS-only, freemium group chat will never reach mass appeal if their goal is to make money off of it.

Re: Wavelength

#82

Post by rpgbr »

> Messages, Signal, WhatsApp, and their cohorts all share the same fundamental two-level design: a list of chats, and a single thread of a messages within each chat.

WhatsApp and Telegram both got “rooms” inside groups (“communities” and “topics”, respectively) to organize groups around topics/subjects, pretty much like Slack and Discord.

Hard to justify a whole new app just to mimic features all other apps, with people already using them, have or will eventually have.

Re: Wavelength

#83

Post by sho_hn »

georgelyon wrote: post #14
slg wrote: post #7

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but how can an app claim end-to-end encryption with a privacy first mindset while also using an AI chatbot run by a third party company? What actually is being shared with OpenAI?

The app has an “@AI” user which needs to be mentioned for the data to be shared. Chef’s kiss emoji from me in terms of transparency. Also, if you DM @AI it calls out that the message will be shared with OpenAI and Wavelength.

Good on the transparency for sure, but then again a messaging app where the headlining, differenciating factor is something that encourages dropping privacy protections from within the chat feels conceptually awkward to me.

Imagine a group chat on Signal, but in the middle of the chat dangles a big carrot enticing other group members to forward the discussion to OpenAI conveniently.

Sure, there's various other ways someone you talk to could do this silently. But ignorance is bliss vs. an inline feature to flaunt it.

Re: Wavelength

#84

Post by djmips »

I'm going to come up with a chat app called Resonate. It's going to be really cool. I just need a good website and some ML angle and I'll get some funding.

Re: Wavelength

#85

Post by bloggie »

djmips wrote: post #84

I'm going to come up with a chat app called Resonate. It's going to be really cool. I just need a good website and some ML angle and I'll get some funding.

I'm going to the inverse of whatever these guys do and call it Frequency.

Re: Wavelength

#86

Post by shafyy »

wslh wrote: post #80

IMHO the core point is John Gruber equity, so it is basically a business promotion not an article: "Not only was my feedback warmly received, it begat a series of discussions that culminated in my gladly accepting a position as an official adviser to the company, in exchange for a small amount of equity. I’m happy to disclose this now, and will continue to disclose it when writing about Wavelength henceforth.". The d…

Exactly. He should have started the article with "Disclaimer: [...]".

Re: Wavelength

#87

Post by newaccount74 »

buro9 wrote: post #59
dewey wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your point is, but even if on some level they accomplish the same thing (exchanging messages on a specific topic) they are very different things (slow/fast, public/private). This is an encrypted chat app where group chats are the main focus.

The tree of: Groups > Threads > Messages is a forum. Forums have had private forums, public forums, paid forums, encrypted, shared, only trusted device networks, for everyone, federated. My point is that this isn't new, and that's a good thing. It resonates, "it clicked", because it's something we recognise. When we recognise something then we can also tap into the deep history and learn from the possibilities of tha…

The big problem with forums are when threads became too long. Either because people go off-topic, or just because the thread has been going on for months / years.

If they could somehow fix that issue, that would be awesome.

Re: Wavelength

#88

Post by newaccount74 »

TeeWEE wrote: post #73

Could not find the app in the app store on my iphone...

You have to search for "wavelength messenger".

App Store search is broken, they are doing the Google thing where they want you to buy ads so people find your app when you type its name in the search box.

Re: Wavelength

#89

Post by buro9 »

newaccount74 wrote: post #87
buro9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tree of: Groups > Threads > Messages is a forum. Forums have had private forums, public forums, paid forums, encrypted, shared, only trusted device networks, for everyone, federated. My point is that this isn't new, and that's a good thing. It resonates, "it clicked", because it's something we recognise. When we recognise something then we can also tap into the deep history and learn from the possibilities of tha…

The big problem with forums are when threads became too long. Either because people go off-topic, or just because the thread has been going on for months / years. If they could somehow fix that issue, that would be awesome.

I personally don't think that's an issue.

The same number of messages are made, why arbitrarily force the discussion to be broken up? Embracing what the users want to do, how they want to us it, is a great way to discover non-obvious uses and to be low friction for them.

Just looked, and on one of the forums I run there's a thread with more than 130K replies https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/133015/ and so long as it loads fast and people are enjoying it, it's fine.

Re: Wavelength

#90

Post by dsr_ »

AdamN wrote: post #69
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also how do you "enforce civility"? That seems like an oxymoron.

Really any of the platforms can support it. Reddit has 'reddiquette' and all it would take is allow reporting on more civility-oriented offenses (like cursing, etc...). Most social networks currently don't allow reporting low-level offenses so it's either a major violation or just ignored entirely. I would greatly prefer Reddit and Twitter if I could cut out large chunks of low quality posters.

Usenet already offered this lesson: every user needs an immediately accessible killfile that can prevent them from seeing:

- this obnoxious user, anywhere

- this obnoxious user, in this thread/group

- this obnoxious user, using any of these keywords

- any user using these keywords in this thread/group/anywhere

Any social media system that doesn't offer these needs a much more expensive moderation system.

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