Show HN: Sameroom.io • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Sameroom.io

#31

Post by uzi » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 6:17 PM UTC

Over the years for work chat, I've used IRC, Skype, Slack and Hipchat (not to mention outside of work use of some of those, plus ICQ, AIM, Facebook, Meebo, etc). I've had coworkers keep multiple clients open so they can reach everyone -- so having a bridge to connect them could be valuable.

I can see this being especially useful as a support chat for a company or open source project or ... where you have one chat room that can be connected by all the different chat platforms so you don't have multiple places to monitor.

Re: Show HN: Sameroom.io

#32

Post by yoavlurie » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

I don't get it. We use Slack and that works for us. We don't IM w/ customers. When we want a mentor or vendor or someone to participate, we just invite them as a single-room guest to our main room. What's the point?

Re: Show HN: Sameroom.io

#33

Post by Qwl » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

yoavlurie wrote: post #32

I don't get it. We use Slack and that works for us. We don't IM w/ customers. When we want a mentor or vendor or someone to participate, we just invite them as a single-room guest to our main room. What's the point?

Your solution is pretty good, but it has some drawbacks:

1. when you kick the mentor or vendor out of your main room, they no longer have a record of what happened. Since Sameroom replicates messages across channels, everyone has a copy (like with email)

2. If your mentor or vendor wants to involve someone else from their side, it's not easy (they have to ask you to send an invite). With Sameroom they would control access on their end of the discussion.

3. Your invitee is forced to use Slack, which isn't ideal if they normally use another tool, say HipChat. Even if they already use Slack, they have to switch teams, which... well, it doesn't seem to scale very well.

Re: Show HN: Sameroom.io

#34

Post by rhaker » Wed, Apr 08, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

Qwl wrote: post #16

zawaideh wrote: post #15

Just going to your site, the value is not immediately clear. One possible thing to consider: Have a public chat room on the homepage connecting some sample chat rooms. Allow users to jump to the rooms in different services.

We're thinking something like a video might be a better approach... Public chatrooms immediately face the graffiti issue.

Yes. It is always very important to think about how bad actors will use the service. Just focusing on the good guys can lead to big problems.

Re: Show HN: Sameroom.io

#35

Post by anotherstiffler » Thu, Apr 09, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

Nice! Since we work with so many different companies (clients) to develop solutions that work for them, it would be great to be able to keep them comfortable with their existing chat tools instead of asking them to move over to our systems. Great for keeping people happy and having to take time training people on systems that they might only use once.