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Show HN: Sameroom.io

71 points by Qwl ↗ HN
We wanted an easy way to connect #channels/rooms between different chat teams, so we made Sameroom. It's like plumbing for chat—allowing you to connect different services in interesting ways (e.g. Hipchat <=> Slack, Flowdock <=> IRC, Slack <=> Slack). Would love to hear what you all think about it.

34 comments

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ben_pr
Looks cool!

Do all the chat messages pipe through your servers? How is privacy protected?

Qwl
All messages in #channels/rooms you've connected, yes.

The great thing about Sameroom is it doesn't store anything! It's just a broker.

ronnoles
Looks interesting, but isn't it just like Slackline? http://www.slackline.io/
Qwl
Yes, similar, but with two major differences:

- there is support for services other than Slack (and more coming)

- no webhooks are involved, you just click some buttons and it's on

zmkahn
Really interesting. Do you plan to integrate Skype?
Qwl
We hope to. It does involve, um, figuring out how the protocol works.

So once we do, our main concern is how to keep it legal. Because clearly, the functionality would be really great for a lot of use cases.

grishick
This is awesome! I've seen different startups try to tackle this problem for the last 4 years and so far this looks like most useful solution.
zawaideh
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.

Qwl
We're thinking something like a video might be a better approach... Public chatrooms immediately face the graffiti issue.
zawaideh
Graffiti could be interesting ;)
rhaker
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.
alexschiff
I wonder how important (and difficult) it's going to be to have a desktop app for this. Everyone I know that uses Slack, Hipchat, etc. has the desktop app.

Do you plan to offer one / is that possible?

Qwl
Definitely no apps.

Our goal is to be the plumbing that connects other apps/services. We think the main value here is the possibility to use whatever app/service you like best to communicate with other teams.

Qwl
Obviously we've got a ways to go to support more platforms. (And some platforms have a ways to go with API development)
azsharapov
This tool has been helping me connecting public gitter channel to my Kato room, to stay up to date. Gitter seems very slow for me (yet).
Qwl
What do you mean by slow -- performance?
azsharapov
I mean UI mainly. UI performance, yes.
CMCDragonkai
A great way to connect a bunch of public IRC rooms to your internal system!
courington
can i connect my IRC behind a vpn with a service outside of the vpn?
Qwl
No, sameroom wouldn't be able to access your IRC servers behind the firewall. (Which is probably a good thing!)
lomowin
I don't get it. Why it's not clickable?
minimal_o
sweet! i'm looking forward to trying this out since i'd really like to be able to connect my Kato rooms to my clients that insist on using Skype or that are already committed to other services like Slack.
bennyjoseph
I work at a large company and have been surprised at all the different communication tools used across teams. This is a super helpful tool to help fix that because I think its hopeless to think that everyone will get on the same tool.
elpeper
Pretty sweet way to provide the infrastructure necessary to communicate across teams using different chat services.
uzi
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.

yoavlurie
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?
Qwl
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.

anotherstiffler
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.