Qwl's comments

viksit, at sameroom.io we are building real-time messaging gateway system (currently adding FB, Telegram and Whatsapp).

Would you be interested in us opening a generic API to apps like yours so we handle all protocol differences?

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.

No, sameroom wouldn't be able to access your IRC servers behind the firewall. (Which is probably a good thing!)

Obviously we've got a ways to go to support more platforms. (And some platforms have a ways to go with API development)

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.

What do you mean by slow -- performance?

We're thinking something like a video might be a better approach... Public chatrooms immediately face the graffiti issue.

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.

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

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.

When people have great search at their disposal they actually start relying on chat to keep their important assets. This enables nice dynamics--the more history they have over time, the more valuable it gets.

If you quit LeChat, or at any other point in time, you can download full history in plain text and in JSON format, which retains important metadata.

I guess similar argument can go for GitHub/BitBucket versus internal Git server, yet GitHub and BitBucket are very popular for private repositories.

When we get subpoenaed by the court.

We perform backups of chat history, accounts and any other customer data, encrypt them and upload to multiple locations outside of our data center.

Major differences:

- We strive to have the best history search experience. As-you-type very vast search that does not obstruct you conversation view.

- We want to enable having more than one concurrent conversation without needing to constantly switch between tabs.

- We want to provide state-of-the-art API and integration with tools you are using.

Sure, if you sign up we are sending announcements about new features.

Dev tools integration is our big focus. So far we have GitHub, BitBucket, CloudForge and Airbrake plus raw HTTP and direct email address for each chat room. One of our customers created a Ruby Gem [1].

[1] http://rubygems.org/gems/lechat-rb

Our immediate plan is to provide great native apps for mobile and desktop that will use our proprietary protocol. We like to think of LeChat as "Dropbox of chats", you never leave your conversation as you move between desktop, web and mobile devices. Gateways for XMPP and IRC are further down our list and are more on API/integrations side.