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Show HN: Mobile Chat Groups for Whatsapp and Telegram

41 points by instakill ↗ HN
I don't know how many of you remember SlackChats - a place to find Slack groups, which is now known as http://www.chitchats.co. I made this after being inspired by that site.

A ton of people use Whatsapp and Telegram groups so you may find it useful to have a kind of Yellowpages for groups, to be able to find them online. The idea is to make it easy to find and connect with people that share your interests.

Any and all feedback welcome.

The link is: http://mobilechatgroups.com/

28 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] thread
eloy
This is basically IRC for IM platforms, such as Whatsapp.

But I like the idea.

instakill
This is just the index to find those, but yes!
anc84
If IRC required two separate accounts and ran on proprietary services.
luastoned
Is there a way to list all groups?
instakill
Not currently, the front page will list up to 30. It's quite new so that limit hasn't been reached yet.
hoppi
I can only login with Twitter? Websites that only have OAuth login are a bit annoying but usually have 1 - 4 different options so I usually have an available account.

Only having login with twitter is preventing me from listing a group and probably a few others as well.

instakill
Yeah I can understand the frustration. Reason for Twitter is identity credibility. I would have added FB as well but this was churned out quite quickly.
hoppi
Twitter is just as bad at identity credibility as having your own user accounts I would of thought. There are numerous accounts on Twitter with unidentifiable entities?
instakill
For egg accounts, sure, but for anyone with > 1,000 tweets, a real photo and > 500 followers, the level of credibility should suffice for most people. What providers would you add in?
hoppi
Right, so the users can figure out if the user is credible and you don't do it yourself, got a bit confused there.

If users want people to join their groups then they would add their verification regardless, eg register on the site and then in some bio I could add my SO, github etc...

tuxone
You should remove type="number" in phone number input field in order to allow '+'
instakill
Was struggling with that one. I was getting issues with a prefixed +. Will look into it. 00 is the equivalent of + in phone numbers BTW.
tuxone
Works great, registration and group join are straightforward.

Looking for some more explore/discovery features (especially location based).

nabusman
Any plans on adding search functionality, tagging, or categorization?
instakill
Search is in there, but we'll consider improving it. Tagging not so much, but I did consider categorization last night. Possibly something like Product Hunt lists i.e HN category with groups like HN NYC, HN SF, HN Japan etc.
soundjack
Looks like a great idea, haven't tried yet but if I join a whatsapp group will my number be shared with everyone in that group?
instakill
Hey there! Thanks. No it will only be visible to the creator so that they can add you.
jsingleton
Nice idea. It's a shame that the integration is manual. Even WhatsApp web is missing some of the group admin features. Perhaps you could generated a vCard (maybe in a QR code) to make adding contacts easier.

I've only used the whatsapp://send?text= URI API before (for https://instabail.uk) but it would be great if they allowed URIs to groups too.

ismail
I keep getting error when trying to logon. Standard rails error.
gowthamgts12
I always wanted these sort of services in India. But can't find one. Nice idea by the way.