Show HN: Miimic – Let your friends text for you | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Miimic – Let your friends text for you

miimic.me

85 pointsjchoudh51 comments

You should pivot to an 'uber for conversations' where at any point you can tap a button, get billed $5, and have a professional screenwriter finish your conversation for you.

You could have 'peak' rates trigger at night to satisfy demand for all the people scrambling to get laid.

Lots of unemployed screenwriters, lots of people wanting to get laid, that is a market waiting to happen.

This is precisely our target state vision and where we are making significant progress in development (including an innovative pricing strategy). We would love to talk if you're interested, please feel free to email us at miimicteam@gmail.com

I'm not entirely sure but I am pretty certain siliconc0w was being sarcastic...

Even if he was, we aren't :)

Thanks!

If anyone ever pulled crap like that on me during a conversation, I would be done with that person forever. I wouldn't care who he or she was.

If somebody is disrespectful enough to engage in behavior as pathetic as that, then I want nothing to do with that person. Maybe "hipsters" would be fine with such shabby treatment, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking it's an extremely distasteful thing to do to somebody you're conversing with.

What, to pay for advice to the question of "oh no, what should I say?!" Its unusual, but I wouldn't find it offensive.

No, to be the person on the receiving end of such a manufactured or deceiving message. Although, now that you mention it, spending good money on something so pathetic is kind of distasteful, too.

If somebody truly can't think of what to say next to me (or anybody else) in a conversation, then ending the conversation or admitting to not knowing what to say is much more sensible and preferable than spending money on getting some third-party to create a response.

Not a fan of Cyrano de Bergerac, I take it?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayingCyrano

>If anyone ever pulled crap like that on me during a conversation, I would be done with that person forever. I wouldn't care who he or she was.

Assuming one would find out about such, which is plausible, but so is the opposite. I can even imagine such a system being engineered to lower such chances of the recipient being rendered unable to discern such messages from current situations where people ask friends nearby in person or over the phone.

It's amazing to watch what people/computers are able to do that can challenge the social constructs that are ingrained into us that some of us have come to accept as how things should be, only to be collectively reminded from time to time of how such systems are constructed on shifting sands in the scheme of things.

Any inspiration taken from Her?

I can actually be hired to throw sarcastic comments at your product and or idea for as little as just 99 cents per message.

In addition to offering 'hired guns' users could get suggestions automatically mined from other users with highly rated replies (similar to A.L.I.C.E) . The UI could be mass effect style with an array of choices:

I.e

T: what are you up to

derivative conversation detected! (read in a protoss voice)

   nothing u? (swipe left)

   busy go away (swipe right)

   returning video tapes (swipe up)

   robbing a bank (swipe down)

How would you feel if I signed up to write for your 'uber for conversations' and build AI to write on my behalf? I'm not being glib, I would actually do that, and I want to know if you'd be cool with it.

We would love to talk. Drop us a line at miimicteam@gmail.com

The movie Her predicted this would be a market someday.

An email version of this would be quite useful for team interactions with sensitive partners/clients/contacts.

I completely agree. IMO email is the correct platform for this service, not text messaging. I often perform this exact workflow manually by walking over to a colleague's desk: "Can you look over this email to <sensitive client> before I send it?"

we just do that at work using an etherpad

You've just invented CaaS: "Cyrano as a service".

I'm not sure what this says on the state of Western civilization, but it's the sort of app that could easily be covered by mainstream newspapers, so you must be onto something. Good luck!

Thanks, toyg!

Is this text flirting for awkward people who can't come up with their own responses or is there another use case? I liked @spartango's idea of an email version for team interactions with sensitive partners/clients/contracts... but I can't see why anyone with even average social skills would use this. I'm not sure text messaging (where each message is relatively low-value and usually to friends who don't care) is the most effective media/platform for a service like this. Anyone have thoughts?

If it shows extended message history I could definitely see some use in it. there have been times when I wanted to share texts I sent to one person with another.

It might also be interesting in situations where you want to introduce soon-to-be friends momentarily -- making them exchange numbers so soon might be unnecessary.

I often see people asking feedback from one another regarding how a conversation is going, what another person could have implied, etc. An app to facilitate sharing and collaboration over SMS conversations sounds like an extension of this behavior.

(Not endorsing it, but it doesn't strike me as something that only socially clueless people would use.)

You should up the contrast on the up/down arrows for users like me with a poor quality display. I missed them completely at first. They just looked like two white circular cutouts.

I could see executives with secretaries being a serious market that would pay for this service.

CxOs and senior level executives are another piece of our target market and we have been engaging heavily with them as we move forward

How often are C-level execs texting other people and would need proof reading?

And if your recipient uses the app as well, the two of you can talk to each other while not talking to each other! :)

Friend has been asking me to build this for them for ages (unfortunately, I'm not a mobile app developer).

He's pretty insightful when it comes to these sorts of things, the kind of "idea guy" that actually makes an excellent product designer. People want this app.

Thanks for saving me the hassle! (of future conversations about how I should build this, rather than actually building it - procrastination's a killer).

extreme scroll triggered animations make it impossible on my tablet to read much..

Edit: what's the use case, why? Who would use such an app, any use cases you think of?

Diminish, it's no secret that texting has become the primary and preferred channel for dating. The texts you send are the only thing that make or break you after you receive someone's phone number and it's obvious that some people are better at texting than others.

Often times what you will see is young men and women giving their phones to their friends to text someone special for them. We hope to solve this by opening texts up into a more collaborative space.

We will fix the animations. Thanks!

Interesting idea. Why not put your comment on the website somewhere? I scrolled through several screens of animations and still had no idea what your app did.

I agree with this suggestion. It wasn't immediately apparent why I'd want to use this, but upon reading the above reply it made complete sense.

All flirting jokes aside, this would be a fantastic service for communications within government and corporate environments.

For those in marketing, managing people on the street that are handing out flyers, promotions, etc from one number would be a fantastic asset.

For groups of friends who wholesale stuff on craigslist, having a single point of contact via text would also be great.

Nice concept.

The magnifying glass on the last panel has the same color like their background. The icons are very whitish and difficult to see.

Not sure if people would use this, i can imagine friends of mine asking me to 'help' in their conversations.

And i fear those 'was it really you?'-questions. Im not sure what kind of social consequences the usage brings.

Relevant: the recently shut down Starpilot. http://xorph.com/starpilot

An explanation: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/digital-projection/C...

@OP can I use this way:

Set all my message to be served to specific contact. That contact can reply to all message?.

Use Case: My parents do not know to use mobile properly and many times they get Income Tax pin, etc ( IMP message) via SMS. And they come to me to reply them properly. Instead using your app I can do it from distance.

techaddict009,

We are working on features for that because of similar situations to the one you just described. Right now, your parents would have to 'miimic' each of those messages over to you for your reply.

Please feel free to sign up for our newsletter to stay updated (bottom of page). Thanks!

I think this is a cool idea and maybe even something I'd use, but the landing page has what I find typical, cliche, sluggish load-on-scroll animations at the moment.

Collaborative flirting! Love it

Exactly. Given that texting has become the primary channel for flirting, we feel that making this a collaborative effort makes it more fun for everyone.

Thanks for your comment!

Primary channel for flirting?

When did that happen?

does "everyone" include the prospective date on the receiving end of behavior that violates basic social norms & assumptions?

Also relevant but not really talked about on HN much: http://www.crowdpilot.me/

Also see http://www.wingflirt.com which also attempts this

Tie up with Tinder. Way for people who get replies faster to earn money from those who don't.

got a couple of suggested improvements:

1. make "Lie and Get Laid" yr slogan

2. reëvaluate yr entire understanding of ethics/communication/human beings

I understand that some may view this as violating the "ethical code". But when you really think about tinder or these other popular dating apps, is there no violation there where the intent is generally sexually driven and where communication is not a neccesity?

Nintendo may not like the use of "Mii"...

Applications in customer service, sales and CRM.

Our background is in sales, service, marketing strategy :)

How bizarre.

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