FlyByChat = IRC + Web 2.0. Feedback appreciated. | Hacker News Reader

FlyByChat = IRC + Web 2.0. Feedback appreciated.

beta.flybychat.com

25 pointsbdr19 comments

Mibbit: I don't have to create an account Meebo: I just have to log in with my existing accounts (then there's also meebo rooms)

Also, the fact that the title flashes about new messages when I've just opened the tab and there are new things in the default chats is annoying. I didn't choose to receive the messages, after all.

Seems like a decent idea, but showing up to the site, I didn't really understand what the point of the site was. The hn title made sense, but the site doesn't seem to explain that well; nor does it explain to me why I should use it instead of IRC. (It also never finished "loading", I assume that's just a js error though).

Thank you. Re: IRC, the answer is that I'm trying to address a different market. IRC is great for us nerds. But there's no good mass consumer version at the moment, and that's what I'm going for.

Questioner: Why should I use this instead of IRC

The answer?: I'm trying to address a different market

Something doesn't quite fit....

read the answer as "You wouldnt"

It looks like he is trying to make a chat application for the people who dont have the inclination to figure out irc, therefore people who already use irc have no reason to switch.

It fits quite well. He's addressing the market of people who don't know what IRC is.

The value prop is simply: FlyByChat is the best place to chat online. Any mention of IRC would be retrogressive.

Uh, Tinychat ?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/tinychat/

There are a lot of problems with tinychat. You can't even join multiple rooms. Of course, they have users, which is a pretty killer feature, but that's what I'm working on. :)

Does it use IRC on the backend? This is a nice UI, being able to set it up with a custom IRC server would be very nice.

Another cool feature would be the ability to embed a chat window on another website.

No, it's not actually IRC, just web-based chatrooms. That comparison has caused some unnecessary confusion. Embeddable is coming soon.

The problem with making a web-based interface to IRC is that you're liable to get blocked like Mibbit.

Why not a web client, to an IRC gateway, to your own IRC servers, though? That would be my strategy—scaling an IRCd is a very, very well-researched problem, compared to scaling your own proprietary backend.

I've always thought that IRC should be more of the technology, not the tools.

More importantly, being able to use IRC would offer the easy solution to the critical mass problem.

The big challenge you have isn't appealing to a different market than traditional IRC. That one is the easy problem to solve.

The hard bit is getting critical mass. Without enough people logged on and chatting, no one new would stay logged in and chatting. As it's only text based, there's none of the voyerism that chatroulette offered in return for sticking with it.

I completely agree that the hard bit is getting critical mass. I don't think video is necessary: there's already a proven demand for text-based chat, which is much larger than ChatRoulette's.

I really like it and can appreciate the technical aspect but I was really hoping for a web enabled IRC client that didn't require me to connect over port 6667.

I would use a web enabled IRC client every day. Crap, maybe you just gave me an idea for my next project.

http://www.mibbit.com/ does this.

But when I last tried it I couldn't get onto Freenode and my guess is that their IPs are blocked on a lot of networks.

Yeah, Freenode isn't listed. I guess a service like this could allow spammers to have a field day.

I like that it suggests rooms to create based on your Facebook interests. Creepy, but awesome.

It'd be nice if it supported OpenID.

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