Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#71

Post by rsamvit » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:29 AM UTC

Axsuul wrote: post #67

ritikm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friday 7/27/12 morning - thought of the idea, briefly talked about the features and did a basic spec Friday 7/27/12 evening - started coding the backend text message routing logic and the website front (standard stuff - Node.js, custom MVC framework, Twilio API, MongoDB, Redis, Heroku, etc. - the works) Tuesday 76/31/12 late night - Feature complete, things are all good to go and working (including edge cases, etc.)…

Nice, thanks for the play by play! And I'm assuming you mean 7/27/12 morning? =p Are you guys by any chance from ASU? Been meeting a lot of people from ASU :)

We're from UC Berkeley

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#72

Post by ritikm » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:33 AM UTC

We're sincerely sorry about any problems people have been having with #pause to make themselves unavailable to chat. There was a tricky race condition that was making it difficult for the #pause to propogate through, but it's been fixed now!

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#73

Post by rsamvit » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:43 AM UTC

simantel wrote: post #31

rsamvit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tell all people three Pieces of Information: 1. Your Gender 2. Your Age 3. Your location (City, State) Thats all! Everything else is private.

So the example on your landing page where the user's school is disclosed is inaccurate?

Yes, that was a screenshot from an earlier version. As of right now, only age/gender/location are used, though we use your education history to train our model for smarter recommendations.

We are toying with the idea of putting back the school displaying feature back in if you encounter someone from the same school. It will depend on the data we gather.

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#74

Post by jim_kaiser » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:44 AM UTC

Please consider adding a disclaimer, that it is not supported internationally. That is really not clear from the home page and clicking on help needs me to login on FB.

Getting the user's to connect on FB before they are made aware that the application won't work in his country is kind of a dark pattern in my view, and makes me trust your site less.

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#75

Post by rsamvit » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:45 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #55

rsamvit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its in the works! This is definitely something we're going to do, but we decided to perfect our launch in the US first before we start accommodating international phones. Stay tuned!

Maybe an SMS to Google Talk bridge?

We've gotten this request many times now, so expect an integration soon!

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#76

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:47 AM UTC

jim_kaiser wrote: post #74

Please consider adding a disclaimer, that it is not supported internationally. That is really not clear from the home page and clicking on help needs me to login on FB. Getting the user's to connect on FB before they are made aware that the application won't work in his country is kind of a dark pattern in my view, and makes me trust your site less.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#77

Post by ritikm » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:47 AM UTC

jim_kaiser wrote: post #74

Please consider adding a disclaimer, that it is not supported internationally. That is really not clear from the home page and clicking on help needs me to login on FB. Getting the user's to connect on FB before they are made aware that the application won't work in his country is kind of a dark pattern in my view, and makes me trust your site less.

Duly noted. Added it to the front page and pushed it live just now. Sorry about the miscommunication there -- we're going to put up better copy along with "What is this?", "FAQ", etc. pages (that don't require you to login to view) soon.

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#78

Post by lmm » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 7:08 AM UTC

When I worked in the industry we saw a few people try user-user chat. It always ended up with users sending threatening/harassing messages to each other, the service provider needing to hire moderators, and then realising that paying someone to be the other end of the chat is just as easy as paying someone to moderate and more effective.

So I guess what I'm saying is I hope you've figured something out to deal with those kind of users.

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#79

Post by lucaspiller » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 7:13 AM UTC

ritikm wrote: post #52

Axsuul wrote: post #22

How long did it take to build this? Fun idea!

Friday 7/27/12 morning - thought of the idea, briefly talked about the features and did a basic spec Friday 7/27/12 evening - started coding the backend text message routing logic and the website front (standard stuff - Node.js, custom MVC framework, Twilio API, MongoDB, Redis, Heroku, etc. - the works) Tuesday 76/31/12 late night - Feature complete, things are all good to go and working (including edge cases, etc.)…

You might want to look into using Nexmo, they have a better global reach and they don't charge for inbound SMS (only the number rental, which is cheaper). I've been using them for the last few months and can't praise them enough!

Re: Show HN: HubChilla - Asynchronously Chat With Similar People Using SMS

#80

Post by koopajah » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 8:02 AM UTC

bherms wrote: post #66

derrida wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about if you don't have a Facebook account?

Then you don't sign up... Startups aren't obligated to give us everything we want and they certainly don't owe us anything. I personally don't like signing up for services using my email and I don't like signing up using Facebook... However, I don't expect startups to cater to everyone with a non-majority preference. Either I make some sort of sacrifice to use their free service, or I don't use their free service.

Ok but this is a Show HN. If we want to give feedback and test the service we HAVE to use our facebook account and give our info when we don't want it and that's problematic.