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Ripple – Chat with people nearby

53 points| jamztang | 12 years ago |ripplechat.io

49 comments

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[+] runn1ng|12 years ago|reply
If I want to chat with people nearby, I would go up, come to them and start chatting with them. In person.

...just kidding, I am an asocial person, I don't speak with other people.

[+] otoburb|12 years ago|reply
I thought they were related to Ripple Labs (https://ripple.com/) and the Ripple cryptocurrency due to the recent Bitcoin and cryptocurrency craze; however it seems they are unrelated and just happened to hit upon the same name for their chat app.
[+] jamztang|12 years ago|reply
Right there's nothing to do with Ripple Labs, we named it through a hackathon before we found it out.
[+] underwater|12 years ago|reply
"Meet like-minded people". Where like-minded means "uses the same OS as me".

Sorry, couldn't resist. Congratulations on shipping. It looks like a great utility.

[+] jamztang|12 years ago|reply
Yes we hope it can be really useful, maybe for conferences and events, never know. We'll see how it goes :)
[+] est|12 years ago|reply
WeChat (by Tencent) has similar feature, but you must first add people to friend list then chat.

However this raise an interesting topic:

How to securely verify that a device is indeed nearby and not spoofing it?

You can spoof your GPS coordinates easily on Android at least.

[+] joe_the_user|12 years ago|reply
Why would that be a problem?

Your location should not be an identifying value but more or less a topic.

Being able to set your parameters to some location somewhere and chat with "random people" there seems like a feature, not a bug.

[+] jamztang|12 years ago|reply
At least for now, it's not meant for private/sensitive messages.

We're more focusing on allowing people to join chatrooms which the location information are to help people easily find them, there's also an invitation feature to let you tweet your room and people can join all over the world.

[+] shousper|12 years ago|reply
Who cares? If I'm on a train heading home, I don't want my conversation terminated because I get too far away. Just link the rooms to one or more relevant locations so people can find them initially, then let people favourite them or whatever so they can rejoin later without having to be in that location.

Yeah?

EDIT: typo.

[+] TeeWEE|12 years ago|reply
I thought about this idea myself. But then I noticed there were tons of good apps doing exactly this. This stopped me from implementing it, because i would not be "first app in the market", because I woudnt have the unfair advantage of being first.

(yobong, palringo, whoshere)

[+] easy_rider|12 years ago|reply
Yes this. Actually the first time I came across a (variation of) this idea, it was years ago and brought up by a co-worker. I have been tinkering with the idea, and also came to the same conclusion, that virality / marketing in general were probably going to play the part hugely, as like you've stated, this has been done a lot..

Maybe it's something that people do not want.

I could see this having great potential in the dating/flirt sectors obvously ;) But you could also imagine things like "shit I think I left my jacket at x/y, anyone found it? " at a festival. Anonimity would probably be mandatory for success.

Remember how well Latitude faired?

[+] mceoin|12 years ago|reply
You guys should check out Yobongo. A similar location-based chat app which has since closed down post-seed round. You might like to see what worked / didn't work for them.
[+] mceoin|12 years ago|reply
They were around in 2011.
[+] Falling3|12 years ago|reply
I often find myself wondering about an application like this. Anyone know if there's something similar for android?
[+] fencepost|12 years ago|reply
Google has in a vague and useless way attempted something like it in Google+ on mobile - there's a "Nearby" option that at this point appears to be people within the same metro area.
[+] orta|12 years ago|reply
I've been using the beta since it came out and have loved the way the app has grown. I'm really interested in seeing its potential in conferences or large towns.

It's small and well focused, they've opened some code from it and seem to be doing a good job of being active in chat. Give it a try.

[+] mengto|12 years ago|reply
It's just fantastic to hear from the Cocoapods team. Ripple wouldn't exist without it!
[+] jamztang|12 years ago|reply
Thanks Orta you've been resupportive to us :)
[+] mk3|12 years ago|reply
I'm not sure about the timeline who released first, but there is popcorn chat app which allows to chat with people who are within one mile from you it was featured here a while back. The functionality seems to be the same less or more.
[+] mengto|12 years ago|reply
Hmm, popcorn is a single chatroom within a location. Ripple is multiple chatrooms within a location, but based on a topic. There is no signup. That actually creates some really interesting use cases. Hopefully, you'll decide to try it out! :)
[+] popey|12 years ago|reply
Reminds me of Trepia which tried a similar thing only on desktops, 10 years ago. It died, unsurprisingly. I had been wondering when someone would revive the idea.
[+] mknits|12 years ago|reply
When its android app is coming?
[+] verystealthy|12 years ago|reply
As Jeremy Clarkson would say... What can possibly go wrong?
[+] MichaelTieso|12 years ago|reply
Nice work guys. Loved the articles on Medium as well.
[+] mengto|12 years ago|reply
Thank you, hopefully our little hackathon experience will inspire others to build their own Apps too! :D
[+] taproot|12 years ago|reply
Random? Why not all the people?
[+] jamztang|12 years ago|reply
Yes you can by inviting people with our per room invitation feature. There will be a need to have chat room concept so people know what to chat on.
[+] martin1b|12 years ago|reply
Looks nice, but IOS only...
[+] yadongwen|12 years ago|reply
nice work. great if can read and send contact info like fb/email..